Mini-Fics
by ElMarquis
Summary: Collections of little stories which may or may not be continued, please do message if you wish to continue them. Many stories designed to screw with your head.
1. Basilisk in lion skin

_Flashback:_

_Quirrel ran in looking like all the hounds of hell were after him as a juicy snack._

"_TROLL! IN THE DUNGEON! TROLL IN THE DUNGEON!" he screamed; "Thought you ought to know." and then collapsed in a dead faint._

_Harry frowned at the 'unconscious' professor, in his opinion the fall looked too well rehearsed. Everybody else around him were screaming and running around like headless chickens. Dumbledore launched a purple firecracker from his wand and thundered;_

"_SILENCE! Everyone will, please, not panic. Prefects will lead their houses back to the dormitories, teachers with me to the dungeons!"_

_Harry frowned and mimicked the wand movements for the amplification spell and yelled;_

"_ARE YOU MAD, THE SLYTHERIN DORMS ARE IN THE DUNGEONS AND THE HUFFLEPUFFS LIVE IN THE BASEMENT, YOU'RE LEADING THEM INTO A BLOODBATH! Keep everyone in the Great Hall with only one entrance! Bar the doors, ward them, whatever!"_

* * *

_Over the next few weeks, Harry never ceased giving Dumbledore a smug 'I am better than you and I know it' look._

"_So Professor Quirrel, it was you all along." Harry commented aloud._

"_You suspected p-p-poor st-stuttering p-professor Quirrel over Severus Snape, swooping around like an overgrown bat?" said the possessed teacher._

_As soon as Harry was free of the ropes, he quickly grabbed his custom, untraceable wand from his pocket and drew the pistol underneath his zip-up jumper. One Smith and Wesson No. 3 reproduction chambering .45 Colt fired once. He then frowned, what to do. Fire was always a good way to dispose of bodies. And if he used it long enough, he'd end up exhausted for Dumbledore to 'rescue'. And the wand was enchanted to return to its holster if the user was incapacitated._

* * *

_Glancing between the sword in his hand, still coated in basilisk blood and the small book on the desk._

"_Sir, I wonder if I could have that little book?" Harry asked._

_Dumbledore simply gave him a grandfatherly look and nodded, making Harry want to gouge out his eyeballs._

_Racing after Lucius Malfoy, Harry yelled;_

"_Wait Mr. Malfoy, I have something of yours!" he called holding out the book._

"_I don't know what you're talking about." growled Malfoy._

"_Oh, I think you do, you do indeed." Harry said with a sickly smile; "This was placed in Ginevra Weasley's cauldron that day at Diagon Alley, when you picked it up and slipped it inside her transfiguration book. Have a look inside."_

_Malfoy took it and found one of Harry's handkerchiefs, this one spotted with basilisk blood and slime. Harry used a wandless levitation charm to 'assist' it making its way to Dobby, freeing the elf._

"_YOU'VE LOST ME MY ELF BOY!" yelled the blond._

"_Wait!" Harry yelled, making Malfoy pause from drawing his wand; "This is Gryffindor's sword, a school artefact, you're a member of the board of governors aren't you? Take it."_

_He'd used a cleaning charm on the sword to remove the blood, so Malfoy took it from him, still glaring. However, Harry slipped slightly, so the razor-sharp edge caught his hand, opening a shallow cut. Malfoy promptly healed it and walked off. Laughing internally, Harry watched as the man strutted off, collapsing before he got to the end of the corridor._

_Nobody ever said that a Potter didn't know how to end a grudge. And make it look like an accident._

_Now where was that book on semi-sentient blood-based golems. No way in hell was he wasting a summer at the Dursleys, especially when he owned the wizarding silk industry, most of the press and significant other investments._

"_Dobby, would you like to be my elf... Rules are no punishments and you have to wear a smart uniform to show that you're the elf of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Potter..."_

_Then he needed to catch up on his sword-training. The reason he always wore baggy clothes was that he didn't want people to see his level of fitness and the number of weapons he had hidden on him. The art of the sword, the art of many different swords had been one of his great pursuits since he began fencing and kendo aged seven, a neighbour covering for him by having him off the Dursleys to do 'chores' when there were lessons._

_And he was going to find out what the black mist leaving his scar when the basilisk bit him was._

* * *

Sat in the Infirmary, Harry stared down Dumbledore, whose eyes continued to twinkle, even as Harry felt him scanning what he allowed to bleed through the impenetrable Occlumency shields he'd accidentally built while meditating, learning the martial arts.

He'd nearly killed that little bastard Pettigrew, but getting clipped by a Cruciatus from a bundle lying on the ground had not been good. As Dumbledore finished watching that memory, Harry pushed forward an image of him ripping Dumbledore's twinkly eyes out and sticking them up his wrinkly ass before trailing off into some nonsensical imaginings including a Veela orgy and wondering if there was enough cheering potion in the world to make the greasy bastard happy.

Harry felt the Timeturner he'd nicked from McGonagall's office at the end of his third year in his pocket as Dumbledore turned to leave having given him some repentances which made Dumbledore sound wise but were in fact utterly moronic. Silently disillusioning himself as dog-Sirius looked questioningly at him, Harry turned the Timeturner over once and vanished.

Quickly setting to work, he conjured dozens of pigeons and transferred all of the various tracking charms on himself and his items before sending them, via Portkey, to several thousand feet above London. Then he waited until Dumbledore entered the Infirmary just under an hour later before laying a number of traps, delighting in the terrified squeal of a goat transfigured from a twinkle-eyed bastard as it was hung upside-down from the ceiling.

Calmly stunning it, Harry strode into the Infirmary, absently obliviating Madam Pomfrey who thought he should be in bed before stunning dog-Sirius. A few minutes later, he crossed the ward-lines in the tunnel to Honeydukes and activated something in the region of two-thousand Portkeys made from oak leaves.

"Oh yeah baby." Harry smirked upon seeing the Fidelius-charmed garage where a Ferrari Daytona, two fake passports and the tickets for a cross-channel ferry awaited them.


	2. FOR SCIENCE!

"Fools." Harry chuckled darkly, an unusual act for a five-year-old.

* * *

"_But Aunt Petunia, I could learn to be a proper photographer and help make you some money." begged Harry with wide tearful eyes as he gazed at the basic disposable camera._

"_Why would you want to do that freak?!" she hissed._

"_You always say I'm a burden but I could help alleviate that by selling pictures. I mean that's not a freaky thing is it?" he said pitifully._

"_Very well boy. But you'll have to take some extra chores and maybe get camera lessons so you can learn to be less of a burden."_

* * *

Harry was fairly certain that Vernon's love of being tied up by his wife was fairly unusual, even amongst the usual mating instincts of humans. And he was sure that such photos would not be the kind to be circulated... Maybe the Dursley family would bow before his demands. He could even make life _better_ for Dudley.

* * *

It was a Saturday, Dudley was out on a play date and the elder Dursleys were eating lunch in the dining room. Harry had managed to get an array of blackmail-worthy photographs, each taken perfectly, with expert care and quality. The negatives and two sets of photos were hidden, the third in his hand.

Tapping lightly on the door before entering, he silently walked over to the table and stood out of arm's reach from either of the occupants.

"Yes boy?" said Vernon.

"Uncle Vernon, you are a businessman are you not?" Harry asked.

"What of it?" he snapped.

"You know how appearance is everything in life, as life is business?" enquired Harry.

"Basic principle." grunted his Uncle.

"Well, I'd like to come to an arrangement in return for me _not_ releasing one of several copies of these to the locals." Harry offered, placing the photos on the table.

"What do you want boy." hissed a pale Petunia.

"Apathy. You see, your constant anger is a waste of energy. I never had a chance to know my parents so constantly degrading them has no effect on me. Secondly, I'd like to split the chores with Dudley, after all a bit of exercise will stop him becoming overweight. Have you ever thought about him doing a respectable job in the future where physical fitness is necessary, right now he eats, eats, watches TV, eats, eats and sleeps." Harry replied; "I'd like a room where I can do my own thing. You might like to know I've been faking my report cards from school for a year, I won't change that, but I wasn't lying about helping support this family, Aunt Petunia. I'll even help teach Dudley if you stop his sense of self-entitlement."

"Hmmph. As long as you keep to your side of the bargain." Vernon agreed immediately, glad the boy hadn't asked about why they called him a freak.

"Oh, Uncle Vernon, you've surprisingly been the main male influence on my life. I try to be a shrewd businessman." Harry smirked; "And you can keep that set of photos for free."

A minute later, the walrus-like man glanced at his wife;

"You've got to admit, kid's clever." he admitted grudgingly.

* * *

Over the next five years, life in the Dursley Household improved drastically. Harry brought out a copy of the negatives and several copies of the photos and burnt them in a gaining of trust exercise, not that he'd actually destroy a source of control, as he kept a spare.

He managed to destroy the brat in Dudley and began educating him. It turned out that Dudley wasn't all that unintelligent, he simply needed things explained in perspective. Sure he couldn't work out what five times five was, but he could count a group of biscuits five wide and five deep. By the age of eight, he'd ironed that out of Dudley.

Harry had then assisted Vernon when the latter discovered a conspiracy to commit mass-fraud in Grunnings Drills. So, being a businessman, he helped the conspirators set up a Swiss bank account to channel the money into, they would go to collect it. A shame they were arrested five days before they were to leave Britain, leaving Vernon Dursley as the sole benefactor of the scheme.

In his spare time, Harry had begun learning a lot himself. Breezing through a mock SATS test a year after his arrangement, he begun learning what he could of sciences and languages through the computer he'd built. Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Mandarin, Spanish, French, German, Latin, Italian. Dudley had, surprisingly, encouraged him to study law. Between them, they'd joined several local campaigns to stop people redeveloping patches of the Green Belt and gained quite a notoriety for digging up laws which hadn't been changed in centuries and wielding them with great effectiveness.

Being 'coached' in business by his Uncle, not that Vernon would actually admit it, just saying that he was using Harry as a secretary, he made several sound investments with a small amount of cash he'd borrowed. Petunia, while also not admitting it, coached him in diplomatics and looking after the home, all in the name of chores.

Harry had always been a better cook than Dudley, but it didn't stop the easy camaraderie they established over the pot.

The two took up fencing, kendo, Krav Maga and karate, as well as kart-racing and shooting. He'd persuaded Petunia that Dudley needed to be able to defend himself and his future family while he persuaded Vernon that a gentleman should be able to drive and shoot.

He even dissuaded them from sending Dudley to Smeltings, instead directing him to the Duke of York's Royal Military School, where he felt Dudley would actually excel. Harry also got his first taste of flying, not in anything special, but he was hooked. Being in the air was freeing, where the usual laws of physics were set aside for the wonderful sensations and images assaulting his senses.

* * *

**Shortly before Harry's tenth birthday**

Harry did his daily chores by laying out towels to warm on the radiator, run a bath for Petunia, headed downstairs and put on some Elgar before heading into the kitchen. Having loaded some bread in the toaster, ready to cook, he headed to the box attached to the back of the front door which he'd carved to catch the post.

Raising an eyebrow as he recognised one of the letters as being made from parchment, he threw them on the table and settled down in his favourite armchair to await the arrival of the Dursleys.

Vernon Dursley had changed greatly over the years, losing a great deal of weight, he now wasn't dissimilar to a moustachioed Timothy Dalton.

"G'd day m'boy!" he said cheerfully as Harry laid out several slices of toast and his favourite honey on the table.

"Morning Uncle. Three letters, though one's a bit unusual." Harry replied, glancing across the shelves at one end of the dining room. Again carved by him with Tolkien-esque Anglo-Saxon motifs in the wood which glowed red in the early morning sun, there were dozens of shooting trophies courtesy of him, boxing ones from Dudley, academic ones from both of them and other sporting ones.

He was a crack shot with the Enfield rifles tucked in the gun cabinet in the cupboard under the stairs, in fact the last week's meals had been shot by him. Rabbit, pheasant, partridge, they'd developed something of a taste for game meats, after all what could be shot or scavenged didn't have to be bought.

And the locals would happily buy game meats for exorbitant prices from them, when a .22 LR round to take out a rabbit, or a bird on the ground cost a handful of pence. And Harry only needed one shot from a Lee Enfield No.8 rifle to take the head off a pheasant up to five-hundred feet away.

Dudley actually found that he preferred fishing, but that also kept bringing food onto the table for a minimal price. Harry sat down in the corner of the room on the floor, an arm around the enormous black German Shepherd, Falke, who had been his companion for several years. The Dursleys allowed Harry to have him on a trial basis until someone tried to break into the house while they were out. Falke had sat next to window for several hours with his jaws set around the burglar's ankle.

He was drawn out of his gently running a brush through the dog's thick fur by Vernon paling and choking. Harry simply raised an eyebrow.

Over the next few hours, the explanation of the magical world came out. It turned out that their hatred of it came from fear and irritation. James Potter had played a rather nasty prank on the Dursleys at his wedding, Petunia also had found out how, in the wizarding world, women were chattel.

"Well, that's interesting." Harry commented after quite a long period of silence where he'd let the two adults speak.

"What do you intend on doing with the information?" asked Vernon curiously.

"If your intelligence on the wizarding world is true, and how it's stuck in the medieval era, bleed it dry, burn it to the ground and rebuild it in an image where I can keep bleeding it for every penny." Harry chuckled sinisterly; "I must say I'm curious of the warrior culture of the Goblins. I've learnt a good bit about the Spartans, the Goblins sound similar, very Darwinian, the weakest get rooted out leaving the strong."

"There's m'boy." Vernon said approvingly. He was very much aware that he'd let loose a kraken in a pond full of minnows; "In fact, I seem to remember that you can get all the magical stuff in London, there's a hidden place on Charing Cross Road that leads to the wizards' shopping district. The Goblins run the bank there. I don't see why we couldn't take you there." he added.

Harry's chuckle became a full evil laugh. Far away a blond ponce shuddered in his crushed velvet slippers.

"I think law and economy will be the first things I'll need to study, then a basic foundation in magic." he mused; "After all, I can't take over the wizarding world without the law and money."

* * *

Harry knew it was a risky gamble. Wearing an RAF blue pair of slacks, blazer, and tie, a white shirt, smart brogues and a long dark-blue coat, he strode into Gringotts with Vernon alongside him in a grey suit. A katana custom-made, appropriate for his great height and lithe build, much beyond what should be expected of a ten-year old, was slung at his side, ready to be drawn.

"Were you a goblin, I would let you bring that sword into our bank." said a goblin, approaching them as they entered the impressive banking hall; "Hand over the sword, _wizard_." he added, spitting out the last word.

"Were I a fool, I would hand over my sword, _banker_." Harry replied in a similarly cold tone; "Now, I have business for your esteemed establishment. Wouldn't want to wait too long, after all, time is money."

"The sword, _wizard_." repeated the goblin.

Harry pushed the guard with his thumb so that it clicked, exposing part of the blade.

"Come and get it."

The goblin regarded him with shrewd eyes before breaking into a smirk;

"Very well swordchild, your account manager awaits."

Harry exchanged a glance with Vernon before they followed the goblin behind a counter and down a hallway, passing ornate door after ornate door. Finally, they halted outside a much plainer door, dark, old wood pierced by hundreds of pyramidic studs, huge metal hinges and ornate plates of metal extending from them, nailed into the wood. This was much unlike the ornate elegance of the other doors, it was plain, heavily built and out of place amongst the others.

The wood thundered as the goblin pounded his fist between the metal studs and a moment later it was pulled open by a goblin within, heavily scarred, wearing a chainmail vest, breeches, dragon-hide boots. Strangely, he was wearing a grey pinstriped blazer over the vest.

While the goblin himself was strange, the room itself was more so compared to the few that had been open on the corridor. They were all marble and French eighteenth century furniture. The Potter room was hewn into rock, plain, grey rock. A few worn bookcases were thrown around the room while hundreds of swords, axes, maces, morning-stars, spears, halberds, lances, battle hammers and other weapons lined the walls.

A rough, wood-hewn desk and a dresser stood in one corner, the later supporting several shelves of heads of dragons, Manticores, chimera and other ferocious-looking beasts.

"Master Potter, your family account manager, Blade Master Grimrock the Gaunt." said the goblin next to Harry, almost nervously; "Blade Master, your charge and his non-magical guardian. Master Potter is a swordsman and does not wish to be parted with his blade."

With that, the goblin rapidly retreated.

"Blade Master Grimrock." Harry said, placing his fist over his heart and bowing slightly; "I insist that before any more happens that I apologise for any mistakes and insults I inadvertently make against you, the Goblin Nation and its customs. I have been... inadvertently... insulated from any form of magical culture."

After eyeing him for a minute, the goblin nodded;

"Very well Master Potter. May I point out that you have more respect than most of our customers by the simple fact that you understand a warrior culture and openly defy demands to hand over your blade. Were someone to demand my sword, I would cleave them from head to crotch."

Harry smirked, pushing the katana all the way back into the sheath with a click;

"Very well, but time is money, I have no knowledge of any holdings my parents or their families had or have in either magical or non-magical worlds." he replied after a moment.

"Indeed, you are unaware of the extent of your assets and properties?" asked the goblin rhetorically; "Well, it doesn't particularly matter because when your grandfather, Charlus Potter, and Dorea Potter, formerly Black, died during your father's penultimate year, his will left me complete control of monetary holdings until claimed by his descendants, giving me one two-hundredth of the income per year. Thus, I worked furiously every year since his death as James failed to claim the holdings so that I would earn myself more money, and thus prestige in Gringotts."

"Income increase?" Harry enquired.

"It has increased year on year, current annual income is at approximately at four-hundred and sixty percent of what came in the year prior to your grandfather's death, 1975, he died in 1976." replied Grimrock.

"Fifteen years, four-sixty percent, thus increased by three-sixty which means an average annual increase of twenty-four percent while the overall average income would be two-hundred and sixty-eight percent of the 1975 income." Harry mentally calculated, eyes narrowed in thought; "So each of whatever currency you use would now be four-point-six of that."

"Excellent Master Potter, you have potential." said Grimrock approvingly; "We use bronze Knuts as the basic currency, and there are twenty-nine of those to a silver Sickle, while there are seventeen Sickles to a gold Galleon."

"Thank-you Blade Master Grimrock, but please call me Harry." Harry requested; "But as I'm so very new to the magical world, are there any items you recommend I study, I for one would like to learn your language. I also could do with finding out about my family. You've told me how income has increased but I don't know how much I had to start with, or what status my family had in the worlds."

"Very well... Harry. The Potters in the magical world were the next thing to royalty. They commanded enormous respect, political power and usually a great deal of magical power. There are cases of wizards going bad and becoming 'evil', though the wizards like to throw around the able 'dark' far too much. But only one Potter went bad, and he started the English 'Anarchy' civil war in the twelfth century." replied Grimrock; "And according to the records of my predecessors going right back to then, he did it not out of maliciousness, but boredom. However, he stopped in return for a peerage, an Earl of somewhere-or-other which the Potters hold to this day. Or the Potter, you. Another Potter was granted a peerage by King Richard the Third for bringing forces to help him, another Earldom. A week later said Potter betrayed him and joined the Tudors, noted as just being 'good business'. Henry Tudor granted _another _peerage. None of these were ever revoked."

"I like my family." Harry smirked; "Power, intelligence, money, and after all, that's just good business."

Vernon's moustache was twitching as he tried to suppress a lot of laughter.

"Yes, money-wise if you want to buy a small country, check your trust vault, there's enough in there to do so. If you want to buy a planet, it might put a bit of a dent in the main vault. When in the sixteen-nineties, the wizarding world went into hiding, the Potters simply became a very powerful aristocratic family. They never gave up their non-magical status but instead killed off a few families and inherited their political power, and lands. Your lands are extensive enough in most countries that it would take days to tell you about them, but as your family started out as a Celtic tribe, you go back to the pre-Roman era. Of course, they rallied the other tribes behind them to oppose the Romans before handing them over to the invaders after robbing the tribes blind, and the Romans paid them well for it." Grimrock added.

"After all, it's just good business." Vernon added between guffaws.

"Indeed, just good business. The Roman Villa they had still exists under a Norman fortress. Again they brought overwhelming forces to Harold Godwinson's side and betrayed him a few days later, having robbed him blind. William of Normandy naturally rewarded the Potters. Titles, lands, rights, money. All phrased carefully to not be able to be revoked. Most recently Charlus Potter assisted the Omani forces in the coup during the Dhofar Rebellion, giving you one of the biggest holdings in Arab Oil owned by one person in the world as he was only adding to his father's pre-World War Two investments in Arab Oil. Edward Potter also bought a few of the larger, more impressive ships of the German fleet sunk at Scapa Flow and performed a mass-obliviation ritual which persuaded everyone they had been scrapped." continued Grimrock.

"I suppose. The German fleet was amongst the most powerful of the time, even accounting for losses. A private navy wouldn't be a bad thing to have." Harry contemplated; "Unfortunately such equipment is rather obsolete in this day and age."

"You think he stopped there?" chuckled the goblin; "Whenever the big navies decommissioned their larger ships, Edward Potter would see that it was 'scrapped' and add to his personal fleet. The World War One super-dreadnoughts, the great battleships right up until 1970 when he died. Edward was convinced of the need for naval power and when he kept the Potter merchant fleet going through the Second World War, his obsession paid off as he didn't loose a single transport ship or their escorts."

"Surely such would need a significant number of crew-members?" Harry asked.

"You'd be surprised how few were needed for each ship. Magic could transport shells to the guns, magic could speed up or slow down the turning of the propellers, magic can do a lot if you have the imagination." shrugged the goblin; "You see, the Potters are the last truly powerful family, not tainted by supremacist ideals, there is success or failure, and they weren't fond of the latter, so they'd succeed through whatever methods."

"Admirable." grunted Vernon; "But surely someone would have noticed a massive fleet of battleships somewhere?"

"The Potters, Mister Dursley, had found the Americas long before Columbus and have an archipelago of Caribbean islands heavily warded, magical defences. The entire fleet of over two hundred ships dating back to the eighteenth century are kept there." replied Grimrock; "Edward was not the first Potter obsessed with military power by any means. In fact Charlus Potter in 1975 had his own private Air Force."

"You know m'boy, I'm liking your family more and more." rumbled Vernon to Harry; "Lots of business sense and not the kind to roll over and take shit from anyone. I trust you'll follow in their footsteps."

"Now I'm afraid Mister Dursley, that you have no status in the wizarding world. You are a nobody. Maybe less." said Grimrock bluntly; "Harry's magical guardian is currently lingering in the magical prison with neither charges nor trial. So, as he has been absent, your charge can have himself emancipated."

"What benefits does that bring?" Harry asked, making a mental note to rip down the government and rip its leaders apart.

"In the magical world, you would be Lord Potter, Lord and Head of the Most Noble and Most Ancient House of Potter." Grimrock replied, ignoring the fuming Vernon, he pulled out a piece of parchment and a pin with which he pierced Harry's hand, taking a few drops of blood onto the paper before healing the wound. "This tells me what families you are set to inherit." he explained.

"You could have given me some warning!" Harry explained.

"Man up." deadpanned the goblin; "But anyway, Heir of Potter. Heir of Slytherin. Heir of Peverell. Heir of Black. Heir of Lestrange. The Potters are extinct save for you. The Slytherins are extinct, as are the Peverells. There is a story of three brothers, the Peverells, I won't bore you with the details, but the eldest, the Lord, died just days after the story was set, and with no heir, it passed to his younger brother. You are the descendant of the youngest. However, the second one died with an heir, passing the line on down to a boy called Tom Riddle, an only-just-legitimate child of a squib and a muggle, the former being born to a magical family without magic and the latter being completely non-magical. Riddle went bad, killed your parents and got knocked out of his body trying to kill you. By right of conquest _and_ being the last blood of the third brother Peverell gets you the titles as you were Riddle's closest relative alive."

"Well, shit." Harry commented; "The rest."

"Blacks have a few members alive, your magical guardian and godfather is in prison without trial and the rest are female so can't inherit. You are the Heir Black. The Lestranges are linked to the Blacks, and are locked up for torturing friends of your parents into insanity. You are the Heir Lestrange." explained Grimrock.

"Can I cast people out of the families?" asked Harry.

"Yep." replied the goblin; "But first you need to say 'I, Hadrian Potter, do claim in my rights of ascension, that which is mine'."

" I, Hadrian Potter, do claim in my rights of ascension, that which is mine!" Harry declared. A moment later, he screamed as a black cloud was thrown into nothingness from his scar, and a number of rings settled on his fingers.

"Well, shit." he repeated, trying to rub his eyes as he couldn't see. Then he knocked off his glasses and realised he could see properly for the first time without glasses; "So, how do I throw people out?"

"I, name, disinherit and disown, name, from the House of, name." replied Grimrock.

"So who are the Lestranges?" asked Harry.

"Bellatrix, Rudolphus and Rabastan." the goblin answered; "And also declare that you disband the house and transfer the power to the house of..."

"I, Hadrian Potter, disinherit and disown Bellatrix, Rudolphus and Rabastan Lestrange from the House of Lestrange! I disband the House of Lestrange, let all become part of the House of Black!" he declared; "I hereby combine the Lordships Slytherin and Peverell into the House of Potter!"

Several flashes of light emanated from the rings on his fingers as several of them vanished. The Slytherin coat of arms and the Peverell coat of arms combined with the Potter arms. The Lestrange one simply vanished.

"You'll need these." commented the goblin as he lifted over a huge, thick tome, a smaller one and a strip of serpentine hide with several slots in it; "The larger book is your family grimoire. The old families hoarded knowledge, the Potters have a lot more than any of the others. The second book is a basic introduction to magic for an heir, but by today's fallen standards, probably fourth year magic. The holster contains a pair of wands crafted for you as a baby, only you can take them out."

Harry placed the serpentine hide against his right forearm, and strings burst from it, strapping it firmly, but not uncomfortably to his arm. A twitch of his arm and the intent had an ornately carved wand land in his hand, a huge shower of golden sparks bursting from the tip.

"Technically performing magic outside Hogwarts is illegal, but those wands are untraceable." said Grimrock; "However, I suspect that you won't actually need to do any shopping for a while with that."

"Can you get me some copies of past magical exams? I want to know what levels I'm expected to get to?" Harry requested.

"I'll send them to you with the Potters' courier eagle.

Though he'd also picked up the first year spell books, Harry had managed to get a large number of books on law, culture, rituals and the grey side of magic, where intent governed the use of magic. Vernon upon finding out he was famous insisted Harry get a number of books on combat magic – magic for duelling, and battle magic – an esoteric branch of magic for wide scale battles, mostly forgotten since the institution of the Statute of Secrecy.

The goblins were going to lay down an impressive fortress of wards around Privet Drive as well as delivering several duelling dummies to go in the cellar for Harry to practice against.

* * *

Harry was sat in his bedroom, a scalpel in his left hand and his katana on his lap. He had carved a single rune into the grip of the sword where he'd usually put his right hand, and after pushing a numbing charm he'd learnt onto the palm of his right hand, he swiftly cut the same rune into his hand.

"Ligo!" he hissed; 'bind'.

A flash of magic came from the two runes and the wound quickly healed. Re-wrapping the grip, Harry held up his empty hand and pulled on his magic. A moment later, the sword appeared in his hand. Harry's evil laugh echoed through the house. The wizards wouldn't know what was going to hit them.

Using just the point of a geometry compass, he carved several more runes into the surface of the sword, mostly on the back edge. Ever-sharp, unbreakable, even ones that would channel magic. It was some time before he realised that he'd been in the room carving for over fifteen hours. And the runes were no longer simply scratched into the surface, they were engraved artistically, bound in a weave much like some Anglo-Saxon carvings he'd imitated.

After helping the family get breakfast, he retreated to his room, thanking the heavens for his eidetic memory as he spent the entirety of the day memorising every word of the first year books. Another ritual actually combined his spare wand with the sword, which he found to suddenly begin to grow as it kept up with his rapid growth, whereas it would soon have been too small for him.

Harry had gone through every spell in the books within a week of hard work before switching to the Heir's Guide. That took much longer, but he had essentially finished it by the time September 1st came around, his acceptance letter having long-since been sent off with the Potter courier eagle, a massive Golden Eagle easily half the size again of a normal Golden Eagle.

* * *

Harry was greatly amused. On the train-ride, he had encountered a ginger moron clutching a rat, who barged in and asked if he was Harry Potter. Apparently he was Harry Potter's best friend. And future brother-in-law.

"No." Harry deadpanned as Falke yawned, his jaw displaying a row of very impressive fangs; "The name's Bond, James Bond."

Sneering at him, the ginger walked off, falling on his face as Harry nailed him with a trip-jinx and resisted the urge to find a curse to cause infertility to stop said ginger creating any special children. Dressed in his favourite RAF-blue suit, he simply sat back to enjoy the ride on the steam train. In his opinion, too much heritage had been sacrificed to the cutter's torch.

Glancing at his personal owl, Hedwig, who was perched on the rack opposite him, he rolled his eyes, the intent directed at the retreating redhead. The owl simply nodded and barked approvingly.

Two girls stuck their heads around the door, one a blonde, the other a brunette.

"Mind if we join you?" asked the latter, seemingly far more bubbly than the blonde whose gaze was icier than the Arctic.

"Why not?" Harry replied, shifting over to next to Falke.

"I'm Tracy Davis and icy here is Daphne Greengrass."

Harry was frankly in admiration of the death-glare the latter shot at her companion.

"Harry Potter at your service." he replied kissing the backs of the offered hands.

"What house do you think you're going to be in?" asked Tracy upon seeing her companion had no intention of starting a conversation.

"I like Slytherin's qualities but I think that the body-count in the first week might be a bit too high." Harry replied; "Than and no true Slytherin goes into Slytherin because then everybody would know you're a Slytherin which isn't a very Slytherin thing to do." he chucked; "Hard work and loyalty are important, but I am loyal to... let's see. My dog. And only because he's unendingly loyal to me. I'll use any method to make my work easier or faster without compensating quality. Courage and bravery are only useful tempered by caution and knowing when to avoid a fight. In a way Ravenclaw would be the best for me. Knowledge is power. Ambition is nothing without knowledge. Courage is nothing without knowing about a fight you're getting into. Hard work is pointless if you're stupid."

"And you're a bookworm." commented Daphne, speaking up for the first time as she gestured at the book on alchemy he was reading. Having apparated first aged seven being chased by local bully Piers, Harry suddenly wanted to do that as he was regarded with a cold, calculating gaze. "Alchemy. I've heard it's fairly difficult."

"Never had any problems myself." Harry shrugged; "Then again I've just found magic, not easy but, it sort-of comes to me."

"Explain." she ordered.

Harry raised an eyebrow at the demand and eventually conceded.

"The only method to find your Animagus form is a potion, correct." he replied.

"Yes." answered Tracy.

Harry pulled out a bit of parchment from his trunk and used a book to prop it up as he began to sketch. A short series of runes at the top. Mind, animal, similar, image. Then dozens more encircling it. Image, create, sand, heat, fire, cold, they all lined up. Soon, he beckoned Daphne over first.

She stared at the circle of runes and the small cluster inside it. It mesmerised her, she couldn't peel her gaze away, then suddenly it seemed to rotate in front of her eyes before bursting into sand. The sand swiftly heated as it floated in the air before it reformed into an extremely elegant Arabian Horse made from glass, bucking wildly, mane swinging and tail held proudly.

Harry smirked and handed it to her.

"Your Animagus form milady." he chuckled.

"Do that for me!" demanded Tracy, bouncing in her seat.

Harry repeated, sketching out the runes on a piece of parchment and then activating it as she gazed into the mesmerising element which put a probe into her mind to seek out the inner animal. A minute later, she too was holding an animal, a highly excitable but loyal spaniel.

"How did you do that?" asked Daphne incredulously.

"Use of logic and an expert knowledge of ancient languages, including a number of runic languages." Harry shrugged, settling into a meditative trance. Having been doing it for years, he was finding Occlumency and Legilimency easy.

A little while later, he was shaken back into his body by one of the girls.

"Do you mind leaving for a minute while we change?" Daphne asked, for the first time not utterly cold. Harry nodded and, unholstering his wand, performed a switching spell to place their Hogwarts robes over their clothes, in his case removing his blazer.

"Better?" he smirked.

"Smartass." she giggled.

"Merlin! Someone made the Ice Queen giggle!" exclaimed Tracey.

Harry smirked as he reached into his trouser pocket, checking a selection of vials. Batrachotoxin from a Golden Poison Frog, Ricin from castor beans, Cyanide concentrate from Elderberries, Tetrodotoxin from pufferfish and Strychnine from the Indian Poison Nut tree. A few healing potions, liquid fire. He was set. Not that he was actually intending on killing someone.

* * *

He was seriously disappointed. At the Sorting Feast as he was sorted into Ravenclaw, he felt three mental probes. A very light surface skim from Dumbledore, a somewhat heavier push from the Potions Master, and one with the subtlety of Grond, Sauron's battering ram from Lord of the Rings. From the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.

A touch of healthy paranoia and he'd planted an EMP resistant bug on the teacher. Man wouldn't expect a non-magical listening device. Turned out he was possessed by the murdering bastard who had killed his parents. Harry was irritated. It had taken Harry a bit of calculations as to how long each of his poisons would take to effect the bastard.

He then encased the poisons in hundreds of miniscule slightly enchanted wax pellets, which wouldn't break down when ingested into the bloodstream and release the contents of their magically-expanded compartments unless he allowed them. And he'd activate them the amount of time that the slowest-acting of them would take to work, and the others were timed to release so that they'd all affect him at the same time. He had slaved for hours with a microscope and a mixture of tools to make them.

It had taken several days to get Quirrel to ingest them all, but it was worth it.

Harry was sat at the Ravenclaw table, awaiting the show. He'd activated the poisons through runes, and they would, all together, be taking effect... now.

He wasn't overly sadistic, but watching the man _willingly_ hosting the killer of thousands, including his parents, die was satisfying, though he didn't let it show through his mask of horror. Harry already knew why the man was here. The philosopher's stone.

It had been the first night at Hogwarts and Dumbledore had told them all to stay away from the third floor corridor. He'd immediately gone there, lock-picked the door as using magic could have set off alarms. Seeing a Cerberus, he'd recalled his mythology and sung the beast to sleep. Upon finding Devil's Snare at the bottom of a pit, he simply used a Zippo lighter to cause it to let him free.

A small amount of thermite had got him through the door at the end of the flying key room, and a lot of gunpowder had got him through the chess and troll rooms. The flame-retardant potion in his pocket had seen him through the flames of the riddle room, and sat on a stool in that last chamber, was the pinnacle of alchemy.

He'd gone back around the corner of the third floor corridor having scaled a length of para-cord he'd used to drop down the hole beneath the Cerberus and wound it up behind him by the time Dumbledore had arrived.

Watching the professor go still as a smoky wraith emerged, screaming from him, Harry resisted the urge to bang his head against the table. All he needed was a semi-immortal foe. At least the bastard seemed to be utterly gullible, but it would be nice to kill him once and for all. Or maybe torture him to death once and for all.

"I wonder if we can see Thestrals now." Harry commented, raising an eyebrow as several gazes landed on him and his far-too-sharp favourite suit. At least they didn't know that the sword lapel-pin was actually his katana.

* * *

A couple of days later, he was called up to the Headmaster's office to find both Dumbledore and a man with grey hair, a slight goatee and moustache wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, but with a sword slung at his side.

"Harry, I want to ask why you felt it necessary to steal the Philosopher's Stone from me?" the former asked with a grandfatherly tone of voice.

"Mixture of personal amusement, boredom and simply wanting to get an artefact out of a school full of children back to the person who _hasn't_ had it stolen in the what, six-hundred years of existence." Harry drawled, throwing himself in a chair and propping his brogues up on the desk to Dumbledore's visible but silent irritation. "Mind if I ask how you found out?"

"You used in your message to Nicholas the phrases, needing 'Major rest therapy' and not wanting to 'Parrot Her Majesty', both of which are anagrams of your name." Dumbledore said disapprovingly.

"Yeah, I knew you'd find out, and knowing of Riddle's obsession with anagrams, it would drive you up the wall." Harry replied with a careless shrug; "Don't worry, I'm not being influenced by that little lump of dark lord you left in my forehead. See, apparently the rite of ascension for the Potter family has some less than pleasant effects for false claimants, and that bit of him was a false claimant. That bit of him died."

Dumbledore beamed after paling for a moment.

"That's brilliant m'boy!" he exclaimed.

"Could you give the 'I'm your favourite grandfather' act a rest. I actually prefer the other Dumbledore." Harry commented; "You didn't accidentally accumulate a significant amount of political power, and you didn't use lemon drops to get Riddle to fear you, as the wizarding world is so fond of quoting."

"I like you boy!" said the other man.

"Thank-you Master Alchemist Flamel." Harry replied with a slight smirk, which turned to a withering glare at his slight look of surpise. "It's not a hard deduction, and why don't you just slap a Fidelius charm over your stone, and have either your wife or yourself as Secret Keeper. Even a house elf, they're loyal to death and can't disobey orders."

After a moment of silence, Harry commented;

"Bloody wizards and their lack of any sense of logic."

"Could you tell us how you got through the protections?" asked Dumbledore.

"Sure. Lock-picked the door, sung the Cerberus to sleep and used high-tensile rope to rappel down the hole. Used a non-magical fire-lighter to get rid of the Devil's Snare. Used thermite, which is a product of a form of non-magical alchemy, two atoms of iron to three of oxygen. The thermite burns for a short while at a very high temperature, allowing me to break through the door of the flying key room. I then used old-fashioned seventy-five percent potassium nitrate, otherwise known as saltpetre, fifteen percent willow charcoal and ten percent sulphur. Otherwise known as gunpowder. So I exploded your chess set, the next door, the troll and then used a flame-retardant potion I had in my pocket to get through the flame room. Nicked the stone and walked back out, climbed up the rope, sang the Cerberus to sleep and watched you run around like a headless chicken."

"I don't run around like a headless chicken!" Dumbledore protested.

"Yes you do." chorused the other two people in his office.

"Anyway, do you always run around with lockpicks, climbing rope, fire-lighters, thermite, gunpowder and flame-retardant potions?" asked Dumbledore.

Harry summoned the katana to his hand and began twirling it lazily.

"And more." he drawled.

"You can't h-" began Dumbledore.

"Actually..." said Harry.

"There's..." added Nicholas.

"A law." they finished together.

"Of course there is." sighed Dumbledore.

"Hey, is that a phoenix?" Harry asked.

"My faithful familiar Fawkes-" replied the headmaster.

"Enough bloody alliteration." Harry snapped as he strode over to the bird with a hungry look in his eyes. He wasn't cruel so he cast a massively overpowered numbing charm on Fawkes before spraying him from an aerosol can of petrol he happened to have in his pocket. Pulling out his lighter, he set the bird on fire and pulled out a notebook and fountain pen.

"YOU JUST SET MY PHOENIX ON FIRE." yelled Dumbledore.

"It's all for the Greater Good." Harry chided; "In the name of science. Anyway, he sets himself on fire every so often if I remember correctly. Now shut up while I make notes."

The two elder wizards gaped as Harry calmly kept writing as Fawkes began emitting his own, slightly lighter-coloured flames and fought against the petrol. Eventually, he burnt out the petrol, and just as Harry tucked away the notebook, launched himself at the first-year talons and beak outstretched.

Expertly grabbing the phoenix around the neck and beak, he ignored the talons trying to shred his blazer and strode out, cooing at the bird.

"You and I are gonna get on _just fine_ 'lil man."

* * *

Harry was missing from class for two full weeks, only eating once a day as a Potter elf brought him meals which he usually forgot about within twenty seconds. A great number of attempts were made to breach his sanctum, but the number of runes carved into the walls, floor, ceiling, door, door-frame, window, window-frame and anywhere else he could get them, protected the room from even letting in the sound of the breaching attempts.

He'd managed to keep the dratted firebird tranquillized until he could create a rune-ward to stop him from flaming out. It also deprived Dumbledore of an access method, not that he actually remembered that. At the end of the two-week period of constant work, he decided to give it a break and sent off a couple of bits of mail he'd been meaning to get rid of for days. Unfortunately, he'd sent his Daily Prophet subscription to Dumbledore and Fawkes to the Daily Prophet with a note for the headmaster. Not that he realised it as he slept for over two days straight. At least the blasted thing wasn't trying to burn his face off anymore.

On the upside, he'd also between experiments, developed an all-purpose magical sedative which worked past the basic magic which stopped normal barbiturate tranquillizers from working. As a side-effect, it cancelled all active magic on that person for a five-minute period but couldn't be overdosed. And he'd made a rifle much like the M14 DMR in appearance to fire darts of the tranquillizer as well as a handgun for the same purpose.

* * *

He slipped into the Great Hall, looking pale, drawn and still wearing a lab coat with a selection of his favourite throwing scalpels sticking out of a pocket.

"YOU STOLE MY PHOENIX AND MAILED HIM TO THE DAILY PROPHET!" bellowed Dumbledore.

"Actually, your phoenix threw himself at me he was so eager to help science." Harry corrected; "Anyway, I thought I mailed him back to you?"

"No, you mailed me your Daily Prophet subscription and sent my phoenix to the newspaper. And he wasn't eager to help science, he was trying to claw your face off." thundered the wizard.

Harry just waved his hand dismissively;

"Meh, same difference."

"Harry, my best mate-" began the weird redhead running over. Harry didn't even look at him as he shot him twice with the tranquillizer pistol.

What he hadn't expected on top of the thump of someone unconscious hitting the floor was that he'd hit the rat in the redhead's pocket. And the part of the sedative which cancelled active magic had returned said rat to normal form.

"Who's that?" Harry commented, looking at the chubby man with rat-like features lying unconscious on the floor.

Apparently he wasn't supposed to know as Dumbledore sent all the students back to their dorms while he sorted out Harry's mess... Again.

* * *

Harry spent the next week sucking up to Lockhart, the new defence professor. He was quickly made the man's favourite student as he introduced him to Havana Cigars. He even got Lockhart to admit about a number of rape-mind wipes and the fact that he had stolen the stories of others and wiped their minds. Pretending to be enthusiastic about the bastard was difficult, but he managed to show his admiration, for after all, 'if you've got a story and you don't publicise it, you're not worth the story'.

Lockhart had bought a Pensieve and left copies of every rape, every memory robbery and other foul crime in it. T'would be a shame for Law Enforcement to find it.

He was sat at the Ravenclaw table eating breakfast a few days onward when there was a soft, muffled bang from nearby. Stupid bastard should have checked that none of his cigars contained a small stick of dynamite. Or a large stick of dynamite courtesy of a space-expansion charm.

Later that day, at lunchtime, the Minister, a toad-like toady and a pair from the Daily Prophet came in with two Dementors flanking them. Ignoring the stupid effect that the two creatures were giving off, Harry rushed over.

"Ah Minister, so glad to meet you." he said, flashing a brilliant smile at the camera as several photos were taken; "I had heard you make great investment in the modernizing of Britain to keep up with the lesser wizarding countries. Offering two of your Dementors for the improvement of our country and world will surely show the people how you care so very greatly for their future!"

He wrung Fudge's hand for a few more moments for the camera before shooting the Dementors with his tranquillizer pistol. Five times. Each. Rushing off with the unconscious creatures floating behind him and Falke trotting alongside him with a manic grin.

Dog and master were eerily alike.

* * *

Naturally he didn't bother coming out of his room for several more weeks. Even Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel's attempts to get into his room failed.

"You're so brave!" a voice wafted out of the defence classroom as Harry walked towards it, once more clad in his suit though he had his katana sticking out of his blazer in the normal position, the grip curving downward as it emerged from the blazer.

"I mean he's killed two defence professors already and we're not yet at Halloween!"

"Yeah, and he stole Dumbledore's phoenix and two Dementors to experiment on."

"I wonder how long before he kills Snape..?"

Harry decided to stride in at that moment, not caring he wasn't in uniform.

"Actually, there's no evidence to tie anyone to either of the cases of the defence professors. One is known to have been willingly possessed by a malignant spirit and I've been too busy playing with the Dementors Fudge gave me to look up the case of the latter." he drawled; "And I don't want to kill Snape, he's actually a pretty good Potions Master, even if potions is the silly little brother of alchemy."

He looked over the defence professor. Tired and careworn would describe him. Then there was the quite skeletal looking man lounging at the back, he was pale, had thin hair hanging limply down to his shoulders and a similar beard.

"Maybe though I can invent something to stop him being a vitriolic bastard though..." he mused and turned around, walking out and ignoring someone calling after him; "Then again, I'm sure there are magical brothels... Maybe not in England, stick-in-the-mud prudish morons."

* * *

Harry vanished again for several days, though his lab was deserted, nobody dared cross the boundary-line. His return with a smug smirk coincided with the time that Snape suddenly stopped being a vitriolic bastard but instead began walking around weak-kneed with a massive grin.

"Where on earth have you been?" hissed Daphne as Harry settled down next to her in the Ravenclaw common room for the first time since he'd persuaded Tracy and her to join Ravenclaw.

"Constantinople." Harry deadpanned.

"What!" exclaimed Tracey, sitting down next to him; "And do you have any idea why Snape has become so reasonable in the last few days?"

"Two words, Viagra and hookers." replied Harry; "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got an incompetent politician to manipulate."

* * *

Harry was just walking toward Fudge's office, ever smart when he saw a tall man with sharp features and long blond hair. A Malfoy... Perfect.

Harry strode over and offered his hand to the blond.

"Lord Malfoy." he said with a slight bow.

"Yes, and you are..?" replied the man neutrally.

"Harry Potter." Harry introduced himself; "I have heard much about your political and magical prowess during my short time in the magical world, I was wondering if I could arrange a proper meeting with you at some point, I'm rather strapped for time as I need to get back under Dumbledore's overlong nose."

He swore that Malfoy smirked.

"Of course Mr. Potter, do send me an owl when you like, be it to arrange a meeting or utilise my knowledge." he said smoothly.

The two bowed slightly to each-other and went their separate ways, Harry considering using carbolic soap and pumice to scrub out his mouth and hand. A few minutes later, he'd manipulated Fudge into believing that he had summoned Harry to endorse his scientific experiments and give him a license to purchase any creatures off the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures for a nominal sum, as well as a license to own any creature,_ regardless of danger ratings._

It made it legal for him to have that dragon egg he'd liberated from the first defence professor.

Harry had just emerged from a secret passage into the castle when Dumbledore swept around the corner.

"Ah Harry, I was wondering where you had got to." he chuckled.

"Lemon Drop?" Harry offered, holding out a paper bag.

"Don't mind if I do." replied the headmaster. He didn't bother checking for the LSD and several other mild drugs including adrenalin and some hallucinogenics.

He had a project. There were mind controlling spells, but they were to obvious. Harry was going to make a potion which instilled simple orders without the baggage of mind controlling spells.

* * *

**The Winter Solstice convention of the Wizengamot**

"Honourable Chief Warlock, I have business before the Wizengamot." Lucius Malfoy declared.

Dumbledore sighed, when Malfoy had business, it was inevitably bad for him in some way.

"The Honourable Lord Lucius Malfoy has the floor." he accepted.

"I invoke the right of Sermo Sine Intermissione, speech without interruption." Malfoy added; "The magic which binds us within this hall gives me this right."

"Accepted." Dumbledore replied, and a gold flash filled the room for a moment.

"Thank-you Chief Warlock." nodded Malfoy; "Now, passed in the first few years of this council, any beast, creature or other subhuman being which is the property of a person is their responsibility to care for and control, Master Scribe, do you acknowledge this?"

The court scribe scrambled through a huge tome until he found it.

"Correct Lord Malfoy."

"Now, I believe in fifteen-twelve, another law was passed, that upon the death of the owner, the responsibility would be passed to the next acknowledged blood-kin of the owner, and if no such kin were available, it passed to anyone and anybody willing. Again Master Scribe."

"You are once again correct Lord Malfoy." replied the scribe.

"Now, not long after that, the Dark Mark was brought to Britain by Guildford Le Noir, and the spell was declared a form of binding ownership." Malfoy continued; "Making the marked a form of property, not having the rights of proper wizarding humans."

"Correct." said the scribe, this time anticipating the request for confirmation.

"Very well. I would like to declare, that since Tom Riddle, otherwise known as Lord Voldemort, the branded creatures he formerly owned have become the responsibility of the people to destroy, as they are not controlled, and likely won't be, there are no laws protecting them." Lucius declared; "In fact, no spell is illegal on them, look, AVADA KEDAVRA!"

Walden Macnair toppled out of the stands, dead. The ensuing battle resulted in every Death Eater dead, with only the Minister's under-secretary a collateral casualty. Amelia Bones acquitted herself quite well as seven lay dead around her, all ones cleared of her brother's murder.

A viewing charm winked out of existence and a few hundred miles away, a kid smirked grimly.

"Suggestion implant potion is a success."

He'd drained Malfoy for useful information and every one of those killed at the Wizengamot had committed horrific crimes. Even the under-secretary had been running a child prostitution ring. Now he just had to wring every bit of information out of that dratted diary he'd nicked off the Malfoy family.

* * *

It had taken several months and a brief trip to China but he'd done it. Voldemort wasn't going to be a problem any more. Carving ever increasing numbers of runes, ever smaller and ever more intricately, he finally laid the diary in the centre and cut his hand.

Blood filled the runes until he healed the cut and siphoned any extra blood off the metal so that each rune was only just full.

"Shāo liàn!" he hissed, lashing out with the katana.

A few hours later, he awoke, feeling better than ever. The magic was roiling under his skin, waiting to get out. Picking up his sword, Harry directed it at the wall. The blast of magic which burst from the tip and punched through three feet of solid stone was... unexpected.

A few minutes later, he'd worked out that whatever magic was left across the chain of bits of soul had been absorbed into him.

Harry cursed. It meant he'd have to re-learn everything to get the proper control.

* * *

Upon finally emerging from his lab for a few days without rushing off somewhere, Harry found himself accosted in one of the corridors by the defence professor and his assistant.

"Hey Profs" Harry greeted him; "By the way, what are your names, I've not bothered finding out until now." he noticeably pushed the katana so that it clicked, ready to be drawn.

"Ah Harry." said Dumbledore, sweeping around the corner; "Don't mind if I make sure these defence professors survive a school year."

Harry was the very picture of wide-eyed innocence;

"You really think they'd die mysteriously meeting little old me?"

"No, I'd think they'd suffer either a mysterious accident or you'd kill them in self-defence." deadpanned the headmaster.

"Excuse me, but I was at the table having my meals during the times when the other two died. And so far apart from one being a werewolf and the other an former prisoner, they have, as far as I know, not done anything to threaten the school." Harry replied with a raised eyebrow, hand resting on the katana.

"What, how did you know?!" exclaimed the werewolf.

"One: He's sitting on my chair. Two: He's wearing my clothes. Three: His name's Remus Lupin..." Harry deadpanned, reading from an old OWL defence paper he'd just pulled from his pocket; "By the way Dumbles, I got rid of Riddle, permanently."

"I'm afraid not my-" began Dumbledore.

"Actually, I know about his Horcruxes and I created a small ritual to destroy the chain and anything attached to it. Thus each artefact no longer contains a bit of soul." Harry cut him off before he could finish the 'my boy'.

"How?" he asked in amazement.

"Oh, the Potters have one of the largest dark arts libraries in Europe." replied Harry; "And since immortality comes in two forms, the Philosopher's Stone and dark shit, I assumed the latter since you don't turn into a weird wraith thingy with the stone. Took me five minutes in Secrets of the Darkest Art and ten in Herpo the Foul's diary. Turns out he was a whiny bitch. Anyway, got the information then obliviated everything else from my mind, leaving a message never to look in those books again. It was a simple bit of logic and a brief trip to China via Egypt and I managed to create a ritual to destroy all the linked parts of the soul."

There was a minute of shocked science.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a meeting with a thousand-year-old basilisk. Then I'm building myself a helicopter gunship."

A swish of the sword raised a massive stone wall, stretching from floor to ceiling. He stabbed it into the floor and vanished in a flare of fire.

* * *

About an hour later, he emerged looking very satisfied from a girl's bathroom, levitating several large crates behind him.

"May I ask what you're wearing?" asked Dumbledore as Harry arrived at breakfast the next morning with a pane of reflective glass over his right eye, held in place by a plastic frame and an elastic headband.

"Tactical monocle." Harry replied; "It can zoom up to two miles, has night vision, thermal vision, can record in real time and it can analyse magic. For instance, you have a wand in your pocket with a rather nasty blood curse which will begin to take effect fifty years from when you first touched if you use it regularly. The monocle also contains a runic Legilimancer which will simply inform me of your intent and your Animagus form. It can't be blocked by Occlumency."

"How does that work?" the headmaster asked enthusiastically, sitting down opposite Harry, much to the shock of the other students.

Harry pulled out his wand and said clearly;

"Lumos." and then; "Nox."

"So, our wand can be directed by word." he said before non-verbally repeating the spellwork; "However, obviously we don't need words. That was done by intent of the mind. How does the wand access the mind, after all there are a few skilled Occlumens amongst us, and we can all do non-verbal magic. Thus somehow it must bypass Occlumency shields. When I examined a number of wands, I couldn't find how they did it, so I created a method."

"Indeed." commented Dumbledore, stroking his beard.

"So, I then realised that the mind is a huge place, so I targeted two parts, the one where you have your inner animal and the one which displays how you feel. Don't ask for the psychologist side of things, I'm not in the mood to spend the next week explaining it." Harry continued; "The other parts are ideas from non-magical technology. Even at night, there is light, however little. Night-vision amplifies that light that we can barely see into an image, usually in a weird green colour. I took the idea and modified it to work from magic and not have the weird green colour. Thermal imaging displays the heat coming off objects in a rainbow spectrum, the hottest being red going down to, if I remember correctly, purple. I use a military version which displays everything in shades of grey. So the lighter, the hotter, the darker, the colder."

"And the magical analysis bit?" the headmaster asked.

Harry summoned four goblets.

"Put a few wards between those." he ordered, laying them out in a rough square.

Dumbledore did as he was bidden. Harry began staring intensely at the wards which were barely in the visible spectrum to an experienced magical like Dumbledore. Slowly he began to unravel them using a small focus in the monocle. It didn't take long for him to completely pull apart the wards.

"How?"

"Trade secret m'boy." Harry replied, smirking; "But essentially, this contains a self-contained focus and a link to my mind, I therefore am able to focus magic through it. There's also a few tricks in there which do things like remove the spells from the visible spectrum. Unfortunately, it can't do offensive magic, only passive things like countering wards. Or hacking into them and taking control."

"Why do you keep inventing things instead of enjoying childhood?" asked Dumbledore, perplexed.

"Childhood is an excuse for stupidity and laziness." Harry snorted; "Anyway, I've spent nearly as much time inventing explosives as I've spent doing anything useful. Gunpowder just wasn't enough but nuclear weaponry has radioactive fallout. I've managed to create a replacement fuel to take the place of petroleum, so now my generator is running better, I have electricity for all my machines. I've had to move my lab down to the Chamber of Secrets now because I was running out of room and any more expansion charms would cause the room to implode."

"You found the Chamber of Secrets?" Dumbledore gaped.

"Worked it out within five minutes of learning of the opening back in the '40s." Harry drawled; "I offered the basilisk there to be nice or I'd obliterate her from existence. Want to come and see?"

Not waiting for a response, he strode out of the great hall with Dumbledore following him to a set of highly polished wooden door. Harry prodded a button next to them and walked in as they slid open, revealing a room with a great deal of creamy leather and polished walnut.

"This is my personal route down there. A lift."

Then the lift seemed to drop like a puppet with its strings cut, falling, ever falling until it stopped with stomach-wrenching deceleration. Then the doors opened revealing a large hall of pale, glossy green granite with a vaulted roof.

"I got rid of a load of snake statues and a weird monkey-faced man." Harry explained; "Isis is around here somewhere but she's got used to me being around and stopped being a grumpy cow." he chuckled for a moment before pointing out a number of elegantly carved wooden doors, often with serpentine motifs; "I carved those myself, I've got a shooting range attached, gym with a duelling piste and showers, chemistry-slash-potions laboratory, metal-working workshop, carpenter's workshop, an engineering room and a computer-command centre."

He led them into the the gym first, feeling the wards immediately replace their clothes with flexible joggers, t-shirts and trainers, their clothes being switched onto manikins.

"That's because I'm too lazy to bother getting changed." he explained, walking over to a rack full of swords; "Each room has that function, it's automatic, changing you into whatever clothes are most suitable, and they automatically resize to fit the person. So far you're the first person to come in my secret hidey hole."

Dumbledore twinkled and strode over to the rack, drawing two curved sabres with long, thin blades and basket hilts. They automatically blunted upon leaving their sheaths.

"You're not out of practice I hope prof?" Harry asked, twirling the sword as his headmaster settled into the en garde position. He simply raised an eyebrow and saluted him before settling into the same position.

"You don't think I got the title of 'only person Voldemort ever feared' by offering him lemon drops and cheering charms." Dumbledore chuckled; "I like to keep fit, mental and physical fitness are paramount to magical power and long life."

The room provided them with cushioning charms all over their bodies to stop them inflicting injuries, even with blunted weapons, like for instance poking the other's eyes out.

"En garde! Prêt, Allez!" Dumbledore called.

Harry's first move was to draw the blunted knife he had in his sleeve. The second was to lob it at the headmaster. A red mark appeared over his heart where magic had marked the hit.

"That's cheating!" exclaimed Dumbledore.

Harry cocked his head for a moment then nodded slowly.

"Yes, it is. Shame you're too busy dying to point that out." he replied, bringing his sword up to counter a cut to the head before sweeping it down to cut Dumbledore from his left shoulder to right hip.

A few hours later, Harry collapsed into an armchair in his sitting room in the Chamber, Dumbledore having just left. The two of them had been sweat-soaked and bruised even through the cushioning charms. Whatever his many detractors say, the old man was a vicious swordsman and almost as fast-moving as Harry himself, though he had the problem of being bigger than Harry.

They had fought without breaking off for over an hour-and-a-half until they were too tired to lift their swords. Harry's last act before Dumbledore left was to key him into the lift so that he could join him in his daily practice. If it was the last thing he'd do, he'd stop the man going out in the non-magical world to pick up first-generation witches and wizards dressed in ridiculous clothes.

Sighing, he hit himself with a freshening charm and walked into his engineering lab. Sat in the centre amidst huge amounts of machinery, pipework and bits of metal, was his pride and joy, a Rolls-Royce Olympus 593 such as used in Concorde. He'd always wanted to build his own aircraft, and magic gave him a lot of money and the ability to do so.

* * *

Harry was happy. Six years at Hogwarts, he was going on sixteen years-old and he'd infected Dumbledore. The man had become as 'eccentric' as he was, shown by when they broke Gellert Grindelwald out of Nuremgard simply to help them write a book 'Defeating Dark Lords and Looking Good While Doing It'. The publicity from that stunt was fairly good, especially when they broke back in and left the retired Dark Lord there with a highly renovated room in all of Dumbledore's favourite lurid colours.

Every day when he was at Hogwarts, the two duelled, be it with magic or with swords. Harry had finally reconnected with Sirius Black and Remus Lupin who held joint professorships of defence and split his time between staying with them and the Dursleys who had moved into a townhouse in London not far from the much-renovated Black Family Townhouse.

He'd given up the Black Headship to Sirius, and with it the Lestrange properties and fortunes, along with the Malfoy ones as according to Malfoy Family Law the heir had to be capable of producing an heir. And since Draco had been cursed with impotence and infertility by one of his classmates, it had passed to Sirius.

And while it had been a bugger to arrange, Sirius had accepted the title of Earl of Blackmore as a hereditary peer and held regency for the numerous Potter peerages as Harry couldn't care less for that at the moment. The Queen had been most unamused when Harry had strolled in and dumped a briefcase on her desk full of papers relating to his titles and rights. Eventually, she'd warmed up to him and his antics.

And now, dressed in a far-too-sharp suit with his katana and wakizashi tucked through hiss belt, Harry strode onto the raised dais at Hogwarts with Falke trotting beside him. The huge dog had participated in a ritual which bound his life-force to his master, extending his life-span to that of Harry, and had also increased his size and health.

They were graduating. Going on sixteen, Master Battle Mage Potter was graduating.

Said master had easily walked his NEWT exams after only three years at the school, and had spent the rest of the time in a joint apprenticeship under Nicholas Flamel, Perenelle Flamel and Albus Dumbledore. His degrees in Islamic Culture and mathematics were in while he awaited the passing of his doctorate in Military History.

Harry spent much of the next year travelling the world, putting hundreds of hours of flying in various aircraft from up to and including an F-4 Phantom. He loved being sixteen and allowed to fly solo in an aircraft. He started close to home flying Chipmunk and Harvard trainers, progressing expensively into the two-seater Hawker Hunter operated for flying lessons in the UK. He even put in a few hours on the Spitfire. America had been excellent, so many fast jets, MiG-21s, a Phantom and a number of other toys.

Fun.

Anyway, he was sure the various bone-yards across the world wouldn't miss a few magically-repaired supersonic jets enhancing his own collection. Following in family tradition was important and since he couldn't really buy any more warships, building up the Potter Air Force was fun. It was just annoying that he'd have to get engineers in to put the aircraft on the civilian register once he managed to confound customs into believing that the various aircraft the family owned had been legally imported.

He was seventeen, he had his Private Pilot's License. While he'd enjoyed broom sports at Hogwarts, there wasn't any point in flying anything without a top speed below four-hundred unless it was a means to get to fly something with a top speed of four-hundred or more.

Problem was, Harry was bored. He'd taken over the magical world, starting with the Leaky Cauldron which now from eight A.M to eight P.M was an elegant restaurant, replaced from eight-thirty P.M to four A.M by a club. There was relative peace, and self-improvement could only go so far.


	3. Heir of King Pellinore

Ever since the age of five, Hadrian James Potter, otherwise known as Harry, of No.4 Privet Drive had been aware of a difference between him and any other people he'd met. 'The Force', as he'd christened it after reading part of a Star Wars book, had healed him after an attempted beating from the walrus that he unfortunately acknowledged as his uncle.

Daily over a period of six years, Harry had trained himself to use these powers, strengthening mind and body, manipulating the physical world and mental world, often breaking the laws of physics. With fencing, kendo and karate lessons, he'd quickly become a powerful combatant any time that Gang Dursley came after him. Of course, Harry removed the memories of this training from his family or assailants.

With his school studies suitably dumbed down so as to not arouse the ill will of his relatives, Harry intensely studied financial management, politics and law. Upon arriving at Hogwarts, he redoubled his studies in magical law, finance and politics. What Harry saw there disgusted him, the British Magical World had been decimated by one war after another for several centuries and the weak and cowardly survived by keeping their heads down.

Albus Dumbledore was responsible for a lot of this. He spent months cultivating the Greater Good with Gellert Grindelwald, taking years to confront the ever-strengthening Dark Lord as he lead his army, the Ahnenerbe, and the muggle leader Adolf Hitler's war machine across Europe, Siberia, Asia and the seas between.

Then, as his former student Thomas Marvolo Riddle reaped hell across Britain, he preached redemption and second chances. In Harry's opinion, Riddle was completely lost from the moment he made his first Horcrux. Dumbledore had decided that the blood-supremacy running rampant in Hogwarts, if clamped down on, would simply send more to the Dark. How wrong he was.

However, as Harry's years progressed, he hid his full potential, training under the tutelage of portraits depicting Salazar Slytherin, his honourary sister, Rowena Ravenclaw and his honourary brother, the Templar, Rowena's husband. In the lower Chamber of Secrets, below the Basilisk's hibernation area, he learnt magic, both light, grey and dark. All without arousing the suspicion of the miserable master manipulator.

After Dumbledore had died, the real Harry came into play, vanishing from the Dursley's with his collection of spare wands, including Dumbledore's own. Salazar had told him the true provenance of his cloak and its companions which Harry obtained upon the headmaster's death.

Armed with sword and wand, the Lord Pellinore wreaked havoc with the Death Eaters, obliterating bases in fireballs, killing teams without warning or quarter. It took a few weeks of hard work to obtain all of the Horcruxes which Riddle had created, he'd long since retrieved Slytherin's Locket during the summer before his fifth year, cleansing both it and his scar of their respective taints.

Bellatrix had taken a parsel imperius and retrieved Hufflepuff's Cup before being butchered in the middle of Diagon Alley. Malfoy Senior had met the same fate for simply harbouring one of the foul artefacts. Ravenclaw's Diadem had been cleansed during his exploration of the Room of Requirement in his fifth year.

He'd stuck a piece of Nagini on the front doors of Hogwarts, one on a pillar in the centre of Diagon Alley and on the 'Magic is Might' statue in the Ministry.

With the Diary, the Locket, the Ring, the Diadem, the Cup, Nagini and Harry's scar destroyed or cleansed, Harry hunted Voldemort relentlessly, leaving a bloody swathe of Death Eaters behind him. The Pellinore Family Magic he had inherited through his late mother had proven useful as they were warriors, fighting to win. Harry truly felt sad at each person he killed, often wondering if different circumstances, less prejudice would have made them different people.

Hermione and Ron had been both loyal to him, to the light and Dumbledore. They hadn't truly betrayed him but they had fed information to the meddler which would have been extracted via legilimency had they not. That didn't mean Harry trusted them any more than the rest of the world.

When Harry had claimed the ancestral properties of the Pellinore line, Voldemort had attacked upon seeing the banner of an eagle, wings spread on a blue background surrounded by gold crosses flying from the towers of Hogwarts. The same arms worn by the assailant who had mercilessly butchered his Death Eaters and left at the scene of each massacre. The same arms that were in the nightmares of every pureblood.

The Pellinore family, being warriors, were infamous for their skill in combat as their very blood adapted to its task. Absorbing every skill and ability into the bloodline, upon claiming the title of Lord Pellinore, Harry had received a true inheritance. While they were neither rich nor well known, centuries ago, they had moved around the country like wraiths, taking, destroying but never unjustly or without purpose. They were the grey, neither light nor dark, utilising both and living with and in the shadows.

Harry was a politician, a strategist, a lawyer but first and foremost, a warrior. Before he gained his inheritance, he'd already been pushed in that direction by his bloodline. The Potters were traditionally a powerful family, but with the introduction of the last heiress of the extinct Pellinore line, the production was a person of incredible power, morals and strength.

Upon acceptance of the inheritance, Harry changed, physically and mentally. He grew to near six feet tall, neither massively bulky or massively thin but lithe and powerful. His mind moved a hundred times faster than any other, he could slow down his perception of time. His hair grew long until he tied it back in a ponytail, becoming flat, tameable and a dark brown streaked with tiny lines of silver.

Upgraded Harry version 2.0 operated of the Pellinore Seat at Northgale Castle, a veritable fortress, warded and physically. The immense library and duelling rooms served him well, though it was often lonely. He grew accustomed to living alone, with nought but Ares, the Pellinore Phoenix and several house elves for company.

When Voldemort attacked Hogwarts, he was furious to see his forces decimated by the incredible defences that the old outpost of the Pellinore Territories wielded. Advancing with a platoon of his best Death Eaters, he watched as a lone warlock tore a bloody swathe through them.

Dolohov was split in half from right shoulder to crotch, Narcissa was decapitated by a sword-blow, a dagger disembowelled Macnair, Amycus and Alecto Carrow died in a jet of black-coloured fire which melted the stone below them and obliterated them. Rudolphus and Rabastan lost their lives to slashing curses. Dozens died in an hour of fierce fighting before the young Hadrian Pellinore faced down with Voldemort, Harry Potter having died in the inheritance, if he'd ever truly been more than a mask.

The inhabitants of Hogwarts awoke and rushed to see the courtyard obliterated by two warring mages. Finally, Voldemort had succumbed to numerous wound including being barbecued, impaled on two swords, encased in ice, electrocuted in boiling water and a selection of other dark spells.

Turning his back on the rest of the inhabitants, Harry strode away and disapparated. Now, a few weeks later, near his eighteenth birthday, he was stood at the lone arrow-slit illuminating the Lord's Hall overlooking Northgale town, long abandoned, a dozen manors surrounding the lowest reaches of the castle hill, hundreds of medium sized houses from the fourteenth century at the latest occupied the rest of the town.

The Goblins, upon seeing what they saw as the defeat at the Ministry, had sealed his vaults and prepared to hand them over to the Death Eaters, forcing him to take action. Harry had stormed the bank and killed the manager for the insult and removed the monetary contents of his own personal vaults, both the Black trust and Potter trust which were all that the Goblins could affect.

The contents of those vaults now resided in a shrunken trunk around his neck along with an emergency supply of potions and a few other objects of use. Retrieving the three Deathly Hallows from the trunk by simply tapping one of his wands against it, he ran each object through his hands, thinking;

'Where did these get us, where did Dumbledore get us? What would it be like to change all of this? To go back and fight against the rising Riddle?'

Harry's chair fell out from under him. Spotting it on the other side of the room, he frowned and noted the layer of dust which most certainly hadn't been their before. Then there was the fact that it was much colder now than it had been a moment before, the fireplace was empty, the torches unlit or simply missing.

"Walter!" he barked.

A house elf appeared in the standard apparel of the House of Pellinore, hands raised guardedly.

"You is new Master? I is feeling a change in the bloodline minutes ago!" he exclaimed.

"New? I've been the Lord Pellinore since the summer of '97?" asked Harry.

"Is new Master feeling all-right, winter of 1973 it is!" asked Walter.

"Oh shit." was Harry's curt response.

"Is Master all-right?" asked the elf curiously.

"Yes Walter, can you begin cleaning and restoring the castle, purchase extra elves if you need to." Harry instructed; "Also, I want the wards strengthened, I believe you know how?"

"Of course Lord Pellinore, I will get on it immediately. You is bringing the House of Pellinore to glory once again?"

"I shall, and if you must call me by titles, Master Hadrian will do." Harry sighed.

"Very well Master Hadrian, you can begin by attending the Wizen Council at the big meeting tomorrow!" ordered the elf.

"The Wizengamot. Great, old men and pureblood supremacists the lot of them." he sighed before sloping off in search of the book of debts, after all, enemies may have old debts to pay.

An hour later and Harry had a list scribbled down next to his chair in the newly cleaned study;

_Unpaid Death Eater family debts:_

_Malfoy: Saved the lives of the entire family at the Siege of Paris 845 A.D. Life Debt on the Lord's line._

_Feud against the Gallway family, Pellinore Family hired, Gallway family wiped out. Debt on the Lord's line._

_Feud against the Sidmouth family, Pellinore Family hired, Sidmouth family wiped out. Debt on the Lord's line._

_Macnair: Clan Feud 987 A.D, Pellinore Family hired, McDubh clan wiped out. Debt on the Lord's line._

_Clan Feud, Pellinore Family hired, McAllister clan wiped out. Debt on the Lord's line._

_Warded Macnair seat. Monetary debt on the Lord's line._

_Lestrange – Non-aggression over the murder of William Rufus 1100 A.D. Monetary debt on the Lord's line._

_House feud, Pellinore Family hired, LeBlanc wiped out. Debt on the Lord's line._

_MacArrow, now Carrow: Clan Feud 1232 A.D Pellinore Family hired, McClivert Clan wiped out. Debt on the Lord's line._

_Clan Feud 1232 A.D, Pellinore Family hired, MacBoon clan permanently transfigured. Debt on the Lord's line._

_Black: Shipping protection 1200 – 1422. Monetary debt on the Lord's line._

_Saved lives of Ajax and Polaris Black at the Siege of Acre. Twin life debt on the Lord's line._

_House Feud, Pellinore Family hired, Mortimer Family wiped out. Debt on the Lord's line._

_Yaxley: House Feud, Pellinore Family hired, Beauchamps wiped out. Debt on the Lord's line._

_Pellinore Family retracted Blood Feud. Blood debt._

With just the more notable debts written down, Harry mused on his plans for the future. Saving the Black Family would be good. Rudolphus Lestrange had fed Bellatrix the Imperius Potion for the necessary ten years to bleach all previous remnants of loyalty and personality from her. Narcissa had been bought for Lucius and bound by a marriage contract and Andromeda was struck barren as her only child died. Sirius and Regulus had both died, Arcturus and Cygnus surviving into Harry's lifetime while much of the rest of the family had died during the war or withered away shortly afterward.

Then there was the Order of the Phoenix, misled and led by misleadership with Albus Dumbledore, too many had died, often needlessly because Dumbledore wanted second chances for the Death Eaters. Had half of the Death Eaters been put down like rabid dogs, Britain would have been in a much better state post-war and it would have been unlikely that their would have been a second.

That would end. The Black Family would not fall as it had done, trying to both appease the Dark Lord, the Dark Families and their own need to hold a foot in both camps. Sirius was groomed to be a grey wizard but against the purists while much of the rest of the family was either groomed or pressured to follow the purists. The Order would not be led to its doom by an old wizard without any view of the small people. The Potter family would be guided to the grey, fighting against the dark and siding against Albus 'Greater Good' Dumbledore.

The nightmare of the Pellinore Family would descend on the wizarding world again, pitting the incredible power of the family, even with just a lone member against the dark forces. There was a reason that the Pellinores were regarded as a nightmarish legend, drifting from the shadows, tearing through wards like parchment, the glowing green eyes which were the trademark of the family.

Harry slept fitfully that night, plans, ideas , hundreds of them swimming through his mind at an incredible rate. When morning came, he ate lightly before dressing in a robe of black dragonhide with scraps of chainmail visible from its edges. Flipping up the hood on his cloak, he made the necessary adjustments.

A longsword hung on one hip, a dagger on the inside of each forearm, the coat of arms of the family on one shoulder, the enchantments which made the dragonhide robe seem like it was emerging from the darkness, swathing him in shadows. Finally, the black vortex of darkness in his hood, only pierced by the glowing green of his eyes which were part of the fear spread about the Pellinores.

He disapparated, heading to the private offices and sitting rooms of the the Great Houses, of which few survived. The four founding houses were gone, though it was possible that Riddle could claim Slytherin, though were he to, Harry would have no compunction in putting a blasting curse straight into him. The few remainders of the Arthurian knights were long gone, Pellinore being the last to die out.

Alone in what he would describe as an elegant saloon, Harry paced for a few minutes until a gong rang out. He swept out onto a balcony, surrounded by a dozen or more high-backed seats, looking down onto the courtroom he had last seen at his trial in 1995.

He watched, wrapped in shadows as dozens flooded onto all the other sections of the balconies, Harry sat alone on his end of things, gazing at faces old and new. Very few he recognised, but one or two he remembered or could recognise from photos, paintings or their descendants.

Dumbledore swept in, wearing garishly coloured robes which made the entire Wizengamot blink with both incredulity and sore eyes.

'The contrast between my robes and outlook with those of Albus Dumbledore is so different' Harry mused.

"Hear ye, hear ye, Chief Warlock Dumbledore presiding over the first winter convocation of the Wizengamot!" called out the scribe.

"I hereby take the presiding seat of this convocation." declared Dumbledore, stepping up to his lectern; "Do declare should you have any business before the Wizengamot."

"I do, _Chief Warlock_." sneered someone, spitting out the title like poison.

"Very well, Lord Robert Lestrange has the floor, Lord Lestrange?" said Dumbledore, unperturbed by the hateful tone of the man.

"Yes, I have been asked to represent the Purist Movement, as we have seen the infection of the muggleborn on this country. The Old Ways, thousands of years of tradition, are being thrown out in favour of modern muggle ways which have no place in this world. We must restrict and reduce the muggleborn blight and bring back to greatness the purebloods and our traditions!" announced Lestrange.

Harry meanwhile was quietly perusing the man's mind for scraps of information as he looked at his next target.

"I protest the description of the first-generation witches and wizards as an 'infection' or a 'blight'. If you are truly so shallow to see them as any more, they are at least a means to prevent the inbreeding which has been and infection and a blight on some old pureblood houses. The strength of magic, the strength of willpower and physical strength all degrade with inbreeding." thundered a man from one of the Most Noble and Ancient Houses.

"Come come Lord Potter, surely you do not believe your own platitudes?" asked Lestrange derisively.

"I do indeed believe what my own research has indicated. Do you know how many of your pureblood houses, especially the dark ones, have inbred themselves to death, marrying cousins, siblings and so on, who are themselves so inbred that the result is squibdom. However, I am not so shallow as to see the first-generations as just a breeding tool, they are living, walking, thinking beings with emotion, wants and needs as we all are. Tradition must be preserved but innovation encouraged! The borders of magic which do not corrupt should be explored, and those who haven't been raised with the artificial rules of magic are the best to do so!" replied Charlus Potter coldly.

"Yes yes, we all know how you believe in innovation, but truly believing in the preservation of pure lines by diluting them with lesser blood?" Lestrange commented; "How many times has our Lord offered you a place with him to serve the Greater Good of the pure?"

Harry finished perusing his mind for useful knowledge of the present situation before standing from his seat and thundering across the hall;

"Ask your master about lesser blood! Ask your master about his squib mother! Ask him about his muggle father! Do not spread your vitriol and the false platitudes and empty promises of Tom Marvolo Riddle amongst us! He proclaims himself Lord Voldemort, yet he is false nobility, a usurper of the title!"

Lestrange quailed under the furious, eldritch green gaze of the newest comer to the argument, the lone member of the Great Houses who nobody had noticed. Harry then dropped his furious aura a bit and turned his gaze to rove the seats;

"Do many of you buy into the false platitudes and empty promises of a false lord with an empty name? Is either Voldemort or Riddle a name amongst the old houses, or even the Great Houses of which I represent the last. Do none of us realise that you are being deceived, manipulated and arranged like chess pieces by this false lord, OR DO YOU WANT THAT?" he commented scathingly, alternating between hissing, roaring and flat comments; "However, I give you my promise that the Pellinore family will NOT stand by and let anyone subjugate mankind, even from any self-appointed 'Greater Good'. I will not let my family serve a man who preaches purist mania but is a halfblood, not even having the decency to be a hypocrite born from a witch or wizard or both, but a hypocrite born of a squib and a muggle!"

"THIS HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH!" bellowed Lestrange; "A feud on you Pellinore, a feud! A man too cowardly to show his face before us, yet he preaches his own rhetoric!"

Harry stepped forward, his voice deadly;

"A coward who does not bow to an insane megalomaniac. I bow to no man. Yet who here bears the slave brand of Thomas Marvolo Riddle?"

Thrusting his hand forward, Harry caught Lestrange with a wandless constrictor hex, combined with a mild levitation charm. It was ironic that the force choke he'd copied from Star Wars, a muggle film, was being used to humiliate this man.

Forcefully dragging him through the air toward him, Harry flung back his hood, his aura fluctuating massively. His killing curse green eyes bored into Lestrange;

"A feud you say, what will you give me to not go after your family. Maybe one day you should see the list of names ended by my line. Did you not know that I hold a debt over your line for the eradication of the LeBlanc line? So do tell, how a pathetic little family such as yours expects to destroy a house which has existed since before the Arthurian rule of the wizarding world?" he said softly, his voice carrying across the entire chamber.

Harry then released both spells while adding a banishing hex, sending Lestrange spinning into the edge of the balcony below his seat and sliding down into the floor of the chamber.

"Do not cross me, the consequences are unpleasant." Harry added offhandedly as he settled back into his seat; "Now that that complete waste of time, debating over no legislation but simply squabbling is over, have we got any real business? And I beg of those of you who are true gentlemen not to follow the example of Lestrange."

He cast a spell which temporarily made people forget he was still in the room. For half an hour, non-consequential things were discussed before Charlus Potter brought his own proposition to the table;

"My Lords, Ladies, with the resurgence in dark activity, the highest seen since the Grindelwald Conflict, I wish to propose an increase in Auror and Hitwizard recruitment, lessening the restriction on their spell repertoire, allowing for more lethality and power."

"Now now Charlus, I really don't think this is necessary or the right time to bring this up at all." admonished Dumbledore in his usual infuriatingly condescending, grandfatherly tone.

Harry saw Lord Potter glare at Dumbledore and he quickly stood, dropping the charm which acted as a notice-me-not.

"Chief Warlock, it is neither your place to address the Head of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Potter as anything less than Lord Potter in these chambers or to comment on the legislation. It is your duty to coordinate events within the chamber, not to make comments or attempt to block said legislation." Harry said coldly; "Be that as it may, I for one agree with Lord Potter, for limiting our Law Enforcement will result in needless casualties and fatalities, requiring new recruits to take their places under-trained, which will in turn result in needless casualties and fatalities. We are talking here of brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, not pawns on a chessboard. On a chessboard, I would willingly sacrifice a few pawns, maybe a bishop or a knight to take a queen. This is not chess, this is life where lives are at stake! DO YOU WANT THESE DEATHS ON YOUR HANDS?" Harry asked, roaring his last question.

"My Lord Pellinore has a point, these are not chess pieces but real people, much as the first-generation are not pawns or cattle but real people." commented Charlus Potter approvingly.

"But you would let Aurors use borderline dark magic to apprehend criminals?" asked a Wizengamot member.

"What is Dark, what is Light?" Harry asked; "I have fought before for my life. I used a levitation charm to drop someone from fifty feet in the air when they tried to kill me. I used a sleeping charm to stop someone's heart? Is either spell dark but did I use them to kill? I did indeed. Then I have used the Imperius to get someone to drop their wand and release a hostage, I've used the Imperius to move someone from the edge of a building and from committing suicide. I've used the cruciatus to restart a dying man's heart, I've used the cruciatus to force someone out of a permanent coma. I've used a killing curse to put a friend out of his misery as he begged me to kill him as the pain from an incurable curse consumed him. I've used a killing curse to bring down a rabid werewolf who locked himself inside a hospital on the night of the full moon. I've even prevented a werewolf from going rabid when his cage was sabotaged, freeing him in a house full of children by using the Imperius. Was my use of unforgivable curses unforgivable when I used them to save lives, heal people and put people out of their misery?"

"YOU'RE A DARK WIZARD!" screamed someone.

"I'M AS DARK OR LIGHT AS MY INTENT MAKES ME!" Harry roared; "I WILL NEVER WANTONLY DESTROY, TORTURE OR MURDER. I FIGHT FOR WHAT IS RIGHT, NOT WHAT IS EASY AND I FIGHT FOR MY LIFE! I am disgusted by the close-mindedness of the members of what was once a great council, now reduced to what? Squabbling over why they are better than other wizards? Most see things in black and white, dark and light, they never see the between, neutrality, either in conflict or alignment."

Some people were nodding in agreement, some looked insulted while some looked on in disgust, mostly from the extreme light sided and extreme dark sided. Harry was surprised to see the agreement of Arcturus Black, Charlus Potter, Harfang Longbottom and Simeon Prewett. He'd always expected the latter two to be light as light could be while he knew Charlus was light side of grey and Arcturus was the only level-headed member of the family at this time, an opportunistic man with family first drilled into his mind.

"So, which of you wish to limit our Law Enforcement, thereby condemning members to death or incapacitation because they cannot respond to force with anything more than tickling charms and if they are careful not to make them too powerful, disarming charms." Harry asked acidly, continuing when silence reigned; "Very well, Chief Warlock, if you'll do the honours."

"Y-y-yes Lord Pellinore." replied Dumbledore, shaking himself from a stupor; "All in favour of a fifteen percent increase in budget for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, twenty percent recruitment increase and a review of combat procedures for the DMLE?"

When Harry, Charlus and Arcturus voted in favour, nobody felt like opposing them. Blacks held the ear of many of the Dark Families, Charlus was big with the Neutrals, Greys and some of the Lights. Harry was a fearsome unknown, no house wanted to know if they held a debt to the Pellinores and in the end nearly three quarters of the chamber voted in favour.

"Very well, motion approved. Any business...? No? This convocation is hereby ended!" Dumbledore declared.

Harry quickly rose from his seat, wanting to converse with some of the lower houses as he swept out of the box and into the saloon, making his way into the corridor. He was confronted with a dozen Death Eaters who suddenly became somewhat unnerved as a grin that had no right being anywhere else but on the face of a shark adorned Harry's face.

As near a dozen killing curses were being cast, Harry wrenched the nearest Death Eater to him, redirecting his half-cast curse, allowing it to continue being cast, sending one attacker spinning away in a vortex of green. Ten more killing curses hit the Death Eater he was using a shield.

'Two down, ten to go.' Harry thought happily as he pushed aside the body.

Grabbing another, he spun him over, smashing his face into the floor. By the way his neck flopped, Harry had broken it, killing him stone dead. Stepping over the body, Harry suddenly spun around, gathering momentum into a vicious blow into the windpipe of fourth Death Eater who died with a horrific noise as his windpipe and arteries were crushed by the edge of the hand which slammed into his throat.

Almost lazily, Harry pulled a fifth Death Eater, redirecting the killing curse he was casting so that it impacted another attacker, killing him stone dead before Harry snapped the caster's neck and threw the body aside.

'Six down six to go. Not so good looking is it boys. I haven't even drawn my wand.' he said, grinning mentally.

Reaching out, he snatched another, spinning the body away as his neck broke from a vicious twist which produced a wince-inducing crack. Harry continued to walk forward, a mawashi-geri spinning kick to the head sending another Death Eater to the floor with a broken neck.

When two killing curses were fired at him, Harry stepped aside smartly and let them hit those that hadn't cast them before continuing forward. He grabbed the nearest Death Eater and threw him over, not letting go of his head. The force of the weight of the body versus the somewhat immovable head ended with a broken neck as Harry moved on, spinning the last Death Eater around and putting a knee in his back and a hand round his throat. Wrenching with his hand snapped both spine and neck, causing death.

In less than a minute, an entire Death Eater hunter-killer team had been obliterated by a single fighter. Harry strode to the end of the corridor and yelled for an Auror. He was incredibly pleased to encounter a much younger, less scarred and more intact Alastor Moody.

"Yes?" he barked.

"Auror Moody, I just encountered one or two Death Eaters down here." Harry replied.

"Capture any?" asked Moody.

"None."

"Shame, if you'd called earlier maybe none would have got away." he grumbled.

"You misunderstand Auror Moody." Harry commented, leading Moody around the corner; "I killed the lot."

"Bloody hell!" Moody swore upon seeing the body-strewn corridor; "They sent these after you."

"Lestrange was rather irritated when I wandlessly constricted him and dragged him through the air of the Wizengamot Chamber before throwing him back in the general direction of his seat. I wasn't too careful with my aim." Harry replied ambiguously; "I mostly broke their necks with my bare hands, but a few I threw in front of their friend's killing curses."

"At least these scum are gone. Couldn't have brought a few more for you to kill could they?" Moody continued to grumble.

"Don't worry, their confederates will see no quarter from me." Harry said coldly; "Next time you might need a mop. I didn't want to get blood over my favourite battlerobes so I killed them cleanly."

He strode off in search of the Ancient and Noble Houses lounge, lighting his pipe as he did so, a fragrant, spicy and exotic smell exuding from it. Moody's last comment before he was out of hearing range was 'bloody hell'.

'Maybe next time it will be a bloody hell for the torturers, rapists and murderers who serve Riddle.' Harry commented mentally.

Standing outside the Ancient and Noble Houses lounge, Harry rapped smartly on the varnished mahogany door which was promptly answered by someone he didn't recognise who quickly turned white and as near as was possible ran away.

"Am I really so terrifying?" Harry wondered out loud.

"You did a fairly good job being terrifying with Lestrange earlier." commented someone from beside him.

Harry spun around, meeting the scrutinizing gaze of Charlus Potter. He simply raised an eyebrow in response.

"It must take something to make someone of your age as you seem to be." Harry's grandfather prodded.

Harry sighed and suddenly a fair amount of weariness crossed his features momentarily before he slammed his mask back in place.

"Aye, war is a nasty thing. I've experienced my own and swore not to allow one to continue over here." he replied tiredly.

"I lived through the Grindelwald uprising and this seems to be developing into something similar." Charlus commented; "I've never seen someone who seemed so personally involved."

"The bastard I was after took my parents from me. I was a year and a half old at the time. Mind you, this was a man quite a lot more powerful than your local Dark Lord, it would take a lot of distasteful rituals to get Riddle up to his power level." Harry replied.

"Oh, what happened?" he asked.

"It took me from just before my seventeenth until I was near eighteen to bury the man and every one of his minions, followers and supporters. He was beyond redemption, splitting his soul for a form of semi-immortality. I don't like evil wizards. Alastor Moody is clearing up the Death Eater ambush I encountered on the way here."

"Ambush? On the way here?"

"In the corridor outside the Great House's lounge there were a few of your local Dark Lord's minions. I disposed of them as to get the slave brand or 'Dark Mark' as you call it requires torture, rape and murder. There are no second chances for Death Eaters." Harry growled.

"However, is death the answer to everything?" asked Charlus.

"No. First step is simple intimidation, a glare here, a contemptuous comment their, then negotiation, followed by rumour mongering about the fear of the House of Pellinore, then threats, indirectly. You then threaten directly as I did Lestrange, then you can take out their resources, their businesses and suchlike via debts followed by the other steps if you have the time to do so. Then there is kill, after that is wipe out their family, an option I find distasteful but unfortunately it is occasionally necessary." Harry replied.

"Does the House of Potter owe you anything?" Charlus asked.

"Didn't bother checking, I have no need or wish to extort or blackmail anything from you so I didn't bother finding out." Harry shrugged.

"Not a very Slytherin attitude." added another voice as Arcturus Black stepped up, looking disapproving.

"You're one to talk, I happen to know for a fact I have several debts outstanding, the least of which is two centuries of shipping protection fees owed." Harry commented pointedly before returning to converse with Charlus; "So, as I was saying, as long as you do not support the self-proclaimed Dark Lord or do something which particularly irritates me, of which Dark Lord supporting is one, you're fine."

'There you go Arcturus, take the bait and take your family neutral.' Harry mentally instructed.

The eldest Black nodded once and turned away and walked off as Charlus watched cautiously before commenting;

"He's a powerful man, you don't want to irritate him."

"I know. However, the value of the galleon has changed over eight centuries, so I could pauperise the Blacks. However, I am loathe to do so, and should I do so, I would then step in, possibly through an intermediary and bail them out. Despite that they are beginning to inbreed, the Blacks are powerful, both physically and magically as well as intelligent. I do not want them to support Voldemort, it would do neither them nor us any good but prolong an already lost war. Riddle's time is coming and I don't want to delay the inevitable." Harry replied quietly; "Now, he'll find that he owes me several debts of increasing nature, he'll pull the Blacks into the neutral and hopefully a few others with it. He won't side with the darks of Malfoy and Lestrange if they are seen as my enemies, as Lestrange already is."

"Very Slytherin." the Lord Potter said neutrally.

"Hard work tempered by management of resources and time. Courage tempered by caution. Want for knowledge tempered by need for knowledge. Cunning and ambition tempered by logic and humility. We've got all of them in certain amounts. I try to balance them all, as I balance my light and dark sides." Harry shrugged; "We all have light and dark in us, it is what we choose to act on that matters."

"I suppose that is true, I rather wish I had a child like you. Young Jamie is a good lad but too much of a prankster and despite a fair amount of effort, he remains an only child." Charlus sighed.

"Don't wish for what you can't have. You don't want a child like me. I first killed a man at eleven, though he was willingly possessed by a malignant spirit. I've got more blood on my hands than any of the lily-white purebloods around here, though I would always excuse my kills to myself as necessary, but nonetheless, it saddened me to see so many fallen into the darkness who couldn't be saved." replied Harry before grinning mischievously; "But that's not to say that the 'fair amount of effort' wasn't fun. I do though have a little solution, it'll take me a moment."

Harry quickly retrieved two vials from his shrunken trunk by tapping on it, envisioning the correct vials. Mixing the two together and adding three crushed leaves and three drops of phoenix tears, he handed it to Charlus;

"It's a fertility potion made with Phoenix tears, much stronger than anything else you'll get on the market."

"I-I-If this works, I'll be in your debt Lord Pellinore." stuttered the other man.

"I don't take debts for the little good acts in life." Harry replied; "If you asked me to do what we did to the MacBoons by turning someone into Quintapeds and then setting them on another clan, I'd take a debt, but helping a couple have a child is not a massive debt but my good act for the decade. And between us, it's Hadrian."

"Thank you Hadrian." said Charlus, bowing to Harry.

"Now, on a lighter note, which of the Noble and Ancients are members of the Purist Movement or their militia?" Harry asked; "I'd hate to run into one in a dark alley and miss a valuable target."

"Carrow, the father and twin siblings are all likely Purist Movement, Lestrange and Macnair. Those are the only Noble and Ancient or Most Noble and Ancient or Noble and Most Ancients who subscribe to the movement. There are a few movers and shakers in the lower ranks of the houses but nobody of consequence save for the French ones, Malfoy." said Charlus; "Frankly, I'm surprised nobody has come over to recruit you for their respective causes."

"Selective notice-me-not since Arcturus left. I'm certain that an eighteen year-old, single wizard who is the last head of a Great House would be bombarded with offers of alliance and marriage contracts. Frankly there are very few I would trust here further than I could throw them, you being the exception." Harry shrugged.

With a genuine smile, he bowed and turned away, vanishing silently after a few strides as he apparated away. With his hood up and crest visible, Harry strode the length of Diagon Alley, heading for Gringotts to make a few investments which he knew would be profitable.

* * *

Upon emerging from the bank, he came upon a scene of devastation as Voldemort's forces attacked, burning, torturing and killing their way up and down Diagon Alley. Summoning two Death Eaters, Harry allowed them to smash into each other at high speed, probably killing them before turning his wrath on the other attackers.

Two fell as the 'Thor's Hammer' battle-spell fell on them, three lightning bolts every ten seconds falling from the sky to the target of the wand. Harry's wand slashed like a sabre as he lashed a series of cuts through a Death Eater before conjuring a wall of golden flame which he banished at another group.

He had slowed his perception of time, sidestepping or deflecting numerous dark curses thrown his way which failed to hit Harry whatsoever. Several times, he summoned both live and dead Death Eaters to absorb curses for him, the glowing tip of his wand constantly moving in artistic blurs as he sent spell after spell at them.

A fiery tornado passed down the middle of the street, obliterating another group of dark wizards moments before he conjured a bundle of spears above another Death Eater, adding a massive weight-increase charm to them as they fell. Dancing the ancient dance of battle, Harry immersed himself in the bloodline, scything through the attacking force until the alley was littered with black-robed bodies.

The demon robed and hooded in black from the shadows finally ceased his offensive as the remaining Death Eaters Portkeyed away, his terrifying killing-curse green eyes still roving across the alley, a long, blood-coated dagger clutched in his left hand and a wand in his right.

Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix appeared around five minutes after the battle had finished, wands raised as if they expected resistance. Harry was awaiting the arrival of either them or the Aurors so was simply sat on a bench sipping at a fruit smoothie he'd had Walter get and smoking his pipe.

"Wands out, expect resistance!" ordered Dumbledore.

"Too late." growled Harry; "I was half considering joining the turkey club but since their response time seems to be 'After the fight ends', I'm unsure of their use."

"T-t-they're all dead." stuttered Dumbledore as he cast diagnosis charms on the Death Eaters.

"How observant of you." Harry growled around his pipe.

"B-b-but they needed to be brought back to the light and reformed!" he exclaimed.

"Nope. Beyond redemption every hateful bastard of them. I had the misfortune to come across the memory of a Death Eater induction ceremony today. The ceremony was the marking of a dozen Death Eaters where rape, torture and murder were necessary to gain the Mark, sometimes all or some of them at once." Harry growled, turning his eldritch green gaze on Dumbledore.; "Didn't you know that Thomas has mutilated his very soul? He is lower than a rabid dog who should be put down like said rabid dog."

"Be that as it may, you can't just go around killing people!" cried Dumbledore.

"I can and I will." Harry replied; "I've defeated a true Dark Lord with all that it entails, you know that such takes a price. I suspect I know what your price was. Mine was my compassion for my enemies, though it truly helped me eradicate his forces."

Dumbledore had indeed paid a price, that of true love and the ability to have children. Thus, a powerful, skilled and wanted wizard had managed to stay single through the height of his fame after his defeat of Grindelwald. The man suddenly looked twice his already considerable age as he nodded wearily.

"Maybe-" began Dumbledore.

"There's no maybe about it. Riddle is beyond redemption, anyone who bears the Dark Mark has raped, tortured and murdered, thus expending all their second chances. You're at war, act like it. This ain't Kansas any more, you're fighting against an enemy who doesn't hesitate to kill. You need to teach them occlumency to block out any compassion for their enemies, otherwise you will continue to lose."

Ten minutes later, Harry was sat, engrossed in a book on battle magic, chewing on his pipe when the Aurors finally arrived for the clear-up. When the Order had departed, he'd dropped the aura and his hood, though leaving his killing-curse green eyes.

He recognised a much younger Kingsley Shacklebolt and Alastor Moody along with Marlene McKinnon and Amelia Bones, all of them young, recruit-age Aurors under the Grindelwald veteran Moody. There were a dozen or so unidentified Aurors accompanying them.

Moody strode over to Harry who pretended to look up from the book, a slight smirk on his face as he noticed that Amelia Bones wouldn't meet his eye and was blushing furiously. For the woman he remembered as one of the most magically powerful and politically powerful woman in Britain to be blushing like a schoolgirl caused him no end of amusement.

"Don't suppose you had anything to do with this Pellinore?" growled Moody.

"Would you believe me if I said no?" Harry asked, receiving a glare from the aforementioned Auror; "I was returning from Gringotts and there was an attacking force of terrorists using lethal force. I intervened and defended myself using a mixture of bladed combat, a few combat spells and a lot of esoteric battle magic. To cut it short, I massacred the lot."

"Hmmph. Since you've arrived we've had two groups of purebloods killed, there are going to be people out for your blood mark my words." Moody warned.

"I can take care of myself." Harry said with a slight grin, not of arrogance but of chilling confidence.

"That's what worries me. I may hate half of these purebloods but we need a sustainable population." grunted the Auror.

"You could interpret it as my attempts to improve the gene pool. All these purebloods marrying their cousins is causing inbreeding and genetic stupidity. Kill of their cousins so they can't marry is certain to improve the gene pool." Harry theorised; "That and going around smiting people like an Old Testament God can be somewhat amusing at times. Especially with lightning curses."


	4. Phoenix Rising

Harry Potter had a secret. During his detention in the Forbidden Forest for dragon smuggling, he had found a badly injured eagle-sized bird. Quickly wrapping it beneath his invisibility cloak, he'd smuggled the bird to his dorm. Now, at Privet Drive, the bird, an incredibly dark blue-coloured avian, had awoken. As the bird sang beautifully for a moment, Harry was struck by inspiration.

"Hey, do you mind if I call you Ceridwin, it means 'blessed song'..." asked Harry.

The bird chirruped once before tucking it's head under it's wing and returning to sleep. It was a week later, the twelfth of June when the bird finally awoke and stayed awake. It was then that Harry heard a voice in his mind

"_Harry, I thank you for saving me in the forest. Had you not, the Dark One would have drained my magic and killed me._"

"What?!" he asked, realising the bird was gazing into his eyes.

"_I'm a Phoenix, when you saved me, I bonded with you, I'm a part of you, I can communicate mentally. If you want to, you can return the bond and will probably be able to change into a Phoenix._"

"How do I do that?"

"_Simply say 'I, Harry Potter, bond to the Phoenix known as Ceridwin' and bingo._" responded the Phoenix.

"I, Harry Potter, bond to the Phoenix known as Ceridwin." Harry repeated.

A flash of light lit the room as the two merged minds. Harry suddenly had access to an almost encyclopedic knowledge of both modern and ancient magics, as was apparently imbued into each Phoenix before they left for the world as known to humankind. What was unexpected for the Phoenix who had been perched on the back of the chair to suddenly turn into a human form, tipping the chair over backwards.

Despite an unknown human being in his room, Harry instinctively reached out to stop the person falling, only to be dragged down on top of the person, his face landing in the chest of the evidently female human.

"Hey Harry, I know you like being on top of me but can we save the affections for later?" Ceridwin asked cheekily.

"Wha-who-why?" he stammered, blushing bright red as he rolled off her.

"Apparently I now have both a human and Phoenix form, interesting..." commented the girl on the floor, holding a hand up to her face.

Lying on the floor was a beautiful girl, no, young woman, with a sheet of slightly wavy golden-blonde hair swept over a shoulder onto her chest where it reached halfway down. She was dressed in a simple glossy velvet dress in a deep, night-time sky blue which began a short distance above her noticeable breasts and with a girdle belt resting on her hips, accentuating a slender figure. A hood lay behind her head, suitable to be worn to conceal her face if necessary. He realised that the young woman had been his Phoenix until a moment before.

Realising he'd been staring, Harry once again blushed. As gracefully as was possible for the situation, Ceridwin stood from the floor before seating herself on the bed, pulling Harry down alongside her.

"So, how did you manage to turn into a beaut- human?" Harry asked.

"You think I'm beautiful?" Ceridwin replied with a question and a slight smirk. When Harry blushed and began to stammer again, she simply kissed him on the cheek.

"The answer to your question Harry, is that I have no idea how. This is the first time a Phoenix has had a complete bond since Merlin and the third time in history so there aren't many records to go on..." Ceridwin said.

"I had heard that Dumbledore had a bonded Phoenix..."

"He has Fawkes, a minor Fire Phoenix who is his _companion. _I'm an Imperial Phoenix, one of the highest echelons of our society, compare a relation of the Queen to a businessman, that is the difference between Fawkes and myself. Also, I go by the name you gave me, Ceridwin. Now, from your memories, you hate this dump, I'm going to get you out of here if it kills me." she exclaimed.

Looking in Harry's eyes, she suddenly felt guilty at the final proclamation;

"Please don't do anything that would hurt you. I've only just met you and..." Harry trailed off. Once again, Ceridwin pressed her lips to his cheek before reassuring him.

"If you want me, I'll stay, but nobody should be allowed to live with these... creatures."

"All my stuff except you, Hedwig and my invisibility cloak has been locked in the cupboard under the stairs though, I don't want to lose it." Harry said anxiously.

"Don't worry Harry, I'm on it!" Ceridwin replied before returning to her Phoenix form and vanishing in a burst of black fire.

She returned a moment later with his trunk clutched in her talons and dumped it on the bed, finally, Ceridwin shed a single dark blue tail-feather on Harry's desk before returning to human form.

"The feather is for having a second wand crafted for you, also, Phoenix fire can do many things, I used it to clean all tracking, controlling and limiting spells on anything in their, including the Ministry's trace from your wand. Now get your wand out from the trunk and I'll shrink it and get us out of here. Maybe we should move to your estate at Firestone Hall, the Potter Castle." Ceridwin commented.

"Potter Castle? I didn't know the Potters had any properties...!" Harry exclaimed as he handed his wand to Ceridwin.

"You're quite well off, the Potters have quite a few estates across Europe. To get access to any of them requires either emancipation or being 'Of Age'. However, ownership of a familiar such as myself, due to a ridiculous archaic law, counts as emancipation."

"Ceridwin, I could never hold 'ownership' of you." Harry protested.

Feigning hurt, she replied; "But Harry, most young men would love to have 'ownership' of a pretty girl."

"Call it morals Ceri, I don't want control of a _beautiful_ young woman such as yourself." Harry answered, suppressing another blush.

A slight pink tinge adorned Ceridwin's cheeks at this announcement; "But anyway Harry, I mentioned that Phoenix fire has many uses. There is a block on your magic and several skills from your parents, evidently it should have been removed but they have moved on. There is also a piece of black magic attached to your scar. Lie back on your bed and close your eyes."

Harry followed her instructions. A few moments later, he could feel magic active in the room, such as he could feel when entering Hogwarts boundaries. He then felt warmth covering him and then blinding pain. It was then that he simply passed out.

* * *

It was around noon the next day when Harry awoke. Looking over at his battered alarm clock on his desk, he realised that he had been unconscious for just under twenty hours. It took a few seconds to realise that his arms were wrapped around a distinctly feminine body who was uncomfortably close to him, to the extent where the two were melded together, her back against his front.

He began to gently retract his arms from around Ceridwin's form when she complained;

"Shame you're awake now, you make a comfy bed companion..."

"Hey Ceri, I think we need to get certain things done. Like getting out of here." Harry said.

She slid out of the bed and grabbed Harry's wand, shrunken trunk and owl-cage, having allowed Hedwig to fly free earlier in the day. Harry followed, grabbing his wand, and matchbox-sized trunk an miniature cage out of the air. It was then that he realised he was no longer wearing glasses and that he had grown somewhat. While not having become a weightlifting boxer overnight, he'd become several inches taller and had a lithe build.

Ceridwin passed a one-piece robe and a hooded cloak with a glance which conveyed the simple instruction to put it on. Setting aside the trunk, cage and his wand, Harry quickly threw the robe over his head and pulled it down, wriggling into the sleeves and quickly doing up the buttons before clipping the cloak clasp across his chest.

Ignoring the offered hand, Harry wrapped an arm around Ceridwin's waist, the pair vanishing silently. They appeared in a small rubbish-strewn alcove between two empty shops, looking onto Diagon Alley. Ceridwin quickly flipped Harry's hood up before leading him to Gringotts.

Upon entering, the unusual duo made their way up to a teller. Harry announced softly;

"Harry James Potter here to enquire about familial holdings and visit my vault."

"Key?" asked the goblin.

"I am not in possession of my key, I had it for a brief period last summer, I assume it is in the hands of Albus Dumbledore." Harry replied.

"You will have to undergo a blood test. Hand please."

Harry offered his hand, wincing only slightly as a small knife pierced the pad of his index finger, removing a drop of blood before the cut sealed.

"Very well, you are who you say. BLOODBITER! Take my client to see Gutstomper."

A minute later and the duo were sat opposite a goblin wearing a grey pinstriped suit who had three ledgers sat on a pile on one side of him,

"Welcome Mr. Potter and Guest. As you can expect, the vault you have been using is nothing more than a minor trust vault. You are Heir to the Peverell and Potter families with conquest rights over Slytherin. The Potter vaults include your trust vault, the personal vault of James and Lily Potter and the Family Vault. The Peverell vault is devoid of any money, though it has an incredible collection of artefacts and heirlooms of many kinds, created by the Peverell family. The Slytherin vault is locked, completely. No goblin can enter and the last Slytherin claimant informed us that it performed a test which was 'defective', mixing up pure-heart and pureblood, not judging by the latter but by the former."

"Can I access all of the vaults, excluding the Slytherin vault?" Harry asked.

"Indeed you can, yesterday you were emancipated outwith and above governmental authority." Gutstomper replied, proffering a carved wooden box; "Simply take the three rings in this box and place them on your fingers."

Harry quickly removed the rings and placed them on his fingers. The Slytherin ring was two silver snakes, tails intertwined, a gold plate with the coat of arms carved into it held in their jaws, the Potter ring was a band of gold with a red gemstone engraved with the Potter arms. The Peverell ring was a curious object, a large white gem set in gold with a curious device engraved on it.

"Supposedly, the Peverell ring was one of a pair representing light and dark, we do not know what became of the second ring." the goblin informed Harry.

"How do I make someone a ward of a family, giving them the name?" Harry asked.

"Simply lay the ring on the forehead of the one you wish to bring in and say; 'To my house I bind you, with your will, become of us' and both say 'so mote it be'."

Harry slowly turned to Ceridwin, a question in his eyes. She simply nodded and Harry laid the Peverell ring on her forehead and intoned;

"Ceridwin, to my house I bind you, with your will, become of us." before both finished; "So mote it be!"

"I would like my parents' personal vault emptied into the family vault then the creation of a trust fund identical to my own set up for Ceri and no one save the two of us to have access to any of our vaults. Finally, is there any method to withdraw coin without having to take the trip down to our vaults?" Harry asked in rapid succession.

"I shall oversee the transfer, we will simply leave the required funds for the trust fund in your parents' personal vault. Your mother was a shark in a pool of minnows when it came to investment and made both the Potter family and Gringotts Britain immense profit, so that will barely put a scratch in that fund and you can be assured that no one save yourselves will be able to access the vaults, whether they have a key or not, we will install a blood lock. To withdraw funds with ease, our Gringotts moneybag sorts that, simply state the amount needed and currency and it will be transferred to your pouch." said Gutstomper, handing Harry a black leather pouch with a drawstring; "Place a drop of blood on it to gain access. The only place where you can add access to it is in this office with me overseeing."

Harry took a penknife off the desk and jabbed it slightly into the pad of his thumb, placing a drop of blood on the bag, which was quickly absorbed. Ceridwin quickly copied his actions when offered the knife.

"Excellent. The bag has two warning wards, a minor shock ward, a medium shock ward and a bone-vanishing hex for anyone not keyed in. You can add wards at your own pleasure, though anyone not keyed in who tries to modify the device will be hit with a minor lightning curse." Gutstomper added; "There is a gentleman outside who wishes to speak to you briefly, he is a trusted client of Gringotts."

Harry nodded his acquiescence and a few moments later, a tall, distinguished man with iron grey hair, flecked with silver tied back in a short ponytail, wearing smart, simple brown robes.

"Thank you for meeting me Scion Potter. I am Regent Lord Cygnus Black." spoke the man formally, prompting Harry to stand and shake hands with the Lord.

"My pleasure Lord Black." he replied simply.

"I'll get down to business. I am dying. Through your grandmother Dorea Black and... another relation, you are one of the few males in line to inherit Black lordship. During the war, much of the Black family served the Dark Lord, resulting in the near destruction of the House of Black and the disinheritance of any who refused to serve the Dark. I pretended to be a purist for several years while operating alone against the Dark Lord. For fifteen years, a curse which hit me has slowly been killing me." he said morbidly.

Harry was about to begin speaking when Cygnus cut him off with a wave of his hand;

"Don't worry boy, I'll pass on peacefully enough around Christmas. Unfortunately, my daughter;" he spat; "Bellatrix, is the most sadistic, twisted torturer stuck in Azkaban, while Andromeda was disowned for marrying a muggleborn wizard and Narcissa is playing trophy wife and boot-licker to the scumbag Malfoy. If you accept Black heirship, the scum responsible for the downfall of the Blacks will not get our money or any of the numerous items and books we possess."

"And if I accept?" Harry asked, feeling sorry for the man who knew he was to die but still cared enough for the Black family.

"You'll have increased political power, you could probably pauperise the Malfoy family if you can find an excuse, the Black family Library is a wealth of research on all forms of magic, not all good, in fact the majority are dark... You'll also be expected to be seen and heard at meetings of the Wizengamot and thereby socialise with other Lords, lots of filthy politics. Oh... you'll be pissing off the people responsible for the last war." Cygnus said, finishing sarcastically, a slight smirk adorning his lips.

"Final reason makes it worth it..." Harry said, grinning. A flash of gold and Harry caught the Black heir ring as it flew through the air to him; "One thing, I've heard that you were an accomplished dueller and I have a need of someone to instruct me in magical combat. There's probably somewhere at Potter Castle where such can occur."

Suddenly he shivered at the grin on Cygnus' face.

* * *

A week later and Harry was lying on his back on the stone floor of a raised piste, his ribs aching after yet another bludgeoning hex caught him, this time in his left shoulder, sending him spinning to the floor. Cygnus was a demon on the piste, insisting on silencing Harry before duelling, forcing Harry to cast silently. Both Harry and Ceridwin spent a large amount of time duelling him, between meals save for short resting periods and time spent in the Potter library.

On the fifth day of duelling, Harry had hit Cygnus with a spell he had found in the Potter library, a spell near a thousand years old and forgotten to the modern world. A universal counter to long-term curses. As he was unsure if this would save the fifty year-old Black, Harry kept his find to himself, hoping that this Uncle figure wouldn't be dead within months.

Snapping out of his musing, Harry opened his eyes to see Cygnus taunting him yet again by twirling his wand in one hand while grinning. Again. Quickly flipping off the floor, Harry sent a cutting curse and a bludgeoning hex down the piste dodging a blasting curse and shielding against a piercing hex. Sending off a ribbon-cutting curse, he ducked under a stunning spell and weaved out of the way of a chain of disarming, binding and petrification spells before retaliating with an incendiary curse.

Cygnus of course blocked every spell with ridiculous ease, firing a stream of nuisance spells at Harry. Charging a deflection spell into his wand, Harry sent the dozen or so spells flying away from him in various direction. It was then Cygnus made a mistake. He blocked a blasting curse, not noting that it had just passed through a ball of water, spraying it everywhere. A slight pain and blackness engulfed him.

Harry looked on, he'd used a lightning spell on the water before blasting it into thousands of droplets, every droplet electrically charged. Ten minutes later and Cygnus was back on his feet, though he looked slightly sore about being beaten.

"What was that?" he asked.

"Think like a Black. Reducto into the water after charging it with a lightning bolt. Raised a muggle, I know that lightning is a form of incredibly powerful electricity, which can be conducted by water. You failed to realise that every drop of water had a small shock of electricity. Hundreds of them and you went down." Harry said, laughing.

* * *

Cygnus had taken Harry and Ceridwin shopping on the first day at Potter Castle, they each now had a pair of wands, Harry had three as a second custom wand had been created from Ceridwin's tail-feather and elder. He'd also had them acquire dragonhide wand holsters and suitable clothes for duelling. In this case a dragonhide vest over a t-shirt, joggers and a pair of dragonhide duelling boots.

He'd spent evenings teaching the two to use their magic with minor conjuration, some more powerful curses and charms for use in combat. Ceridwin had acclimatised to a duelling style made of charms and transfiguration while Harry actively relied on movement, a small range of shields and his ever increasing repertoire of curses.

They also had begun basic occlumency, even though the Phoenix bond gave both Ceridwin and Harry incredibly strong barriers, they still found being able to channel or block emotion, maintain focus or conceal feelings to be a skill completely necessary in the world outside.

While Harry was unsure of Dumbledore's intentions, he had found too many discrepancies in his past to completely trust the man. He'd been placed with an abusive family due to some form of hinted protection. The only one that fitted the bill was Blood Wards which were both illegal and required blood relations and affection to power them. Lily Potter was an adopted Evans, thus Petunia wasn't her sister in blood according to Lily's diaries. Affection was incredibly scarce in the Dursley household thus the wards couldn't have kept out a determined thief, let alone a skilled Death Eater. Thus, he trusted three people, Cygnus and Ceridwin.

Cygnus was perfectly open about the fact that he was manipulating and grooming Harry to become the next Lord Black, instilling cunning, loyalty to family and a touch of ruthlessness in Harry. Ceridwin was completely and utterly loyal to Harry, helping him become more confident but kept him from becoming arrogant. She'd continued to share a bed with Harry as they had done at Privet Drive.

* * *

Some days later and the unusual trio were sat in a comfortable sitting room, Cygnus peering through a monocle at a book on curses while Harry was sat with Ceridwin nearly in his lap, reading his mother's final diary.

"Pettigrew." he spat; "I now know the name of the bastard who cost me my parents."

Cygnus started slightly before quickly slamming down a mask of indifference.

"Harry, do you mind if I see that?" he asked.

He handed the diary to Cygnus who's eyes roved across the page time and time again before slowly laying aside the diary and rubbing his eyes tiredly.

"Harry, I am going to come clean with you, despite your grandmother Dorea Potter having been a Black, that is not enough to make you Lord Black. Shortly after your birth, the Heir in the male line of Black blood adopted you when he became your godfather. Sirius Black was thought to be responsible for leading the Dark Lord to the Potter cottage as your parents used an enchantment called the Fidelius which meant that only the Secret Keeper could give someone the location of the cottage. We always believed it to be Sirius, my nephew after he _supposedly _murdered a dozen muggles and Pettigrew. We're going on a trip to the Ministry Harry." said Cygnus.

"And being Blacks, we bribe the politicians with coins enchanted with a translocation charm which brings the money straight back to us? Actually, imagine the Potter Scion, the Regent Lord Black and the Daughter of the House of Peverell turn up in Fudge's office..." Harry said enthusiastically.

"Indeed, now both of you go and get some smart robes on, it does well to make an impression, then meet me in the travelling chamber."

Ten minutes later and Harry was in the travelling chamber, clad in a pair of black dragonhide boots, a pair of loose black trousers, a dragonhide jacket with a sunburst compass shape sewn into the centre and a silver lined cloak of black velvet. Harry's jaw dropped when Ceridwin walked in wearing a simple forest green dress, her figure accentuated by the gold girdle belt and her hair running down her back surmounted by a braided circlet of golden hair. Even Cygnus couldn't resist the urge raise an eyebrow.

"Were I your age Harry... Now come on lovebirds, I've got a Portkey each to the Minister's Offices, just remember to keep moving, don't stop until you land and you won't fall on your backside."

A rough Portkey journey later and the trio were stood in the waiting room for the Minister's office, secretaries bustling around, papers flying and quills scratching. Cygnus who was wearing a simple pair of grey slacks, a sky-blue shirt, a grey blazer and a pair of brown leather shoes, strode up to a young woman manning a desk and commanded;

"Tell the Minister that Black, Potter and Peverell are here to speak to him on a matter of some urgency."

Two minutes later and the trio were in the Minister's office, where a portly man was sat opposite a platinum-haired man with sharp features.

"Ah, Cygnus, how are you?" asked the platinum-haired man

"Excellent Malfoy, I have been teaching the Black Scion everything needed for when he takes headship of the family and he has been adapting well and soaking up knowledge like the proverbial sponge. Now if you'll excuse us." Cygnus responded cheerfully.

Malfoy swelled up, going red with fury before stalking out, Cygnus' muttered "Blonde ponce" echoing behind him.

"What can I do for you and your guests Lord Black?" asked Fudge.

"We have come upon a little bit of information from one of the Potter's diaries. Sirius Black was never the Secret Keeper but was a decoy to draw attention away from Peter Pettigrew. We also know that Sirius was never given a trial, though we never protested as we assumed him to be guilty of all charges. I imagine that you'd become quite popular, fixer of Bagnold's mistakes, upholder of justice and political champion of the Blacks and Potters were you to get Sirius a trial by veritaserum within a week. Indeed, you, Cornelius Fudge will be seen as a bastion of integrity and justice, having brought up the subject of the unconvicted inmates of Azkaban." Cygnus instructed, carefully phrasing it so that Fudge both would think it his idea.

"Indeed Lord Black, Bagnold failed in her duty if people were imprisoned without trial. Well, have no fear, the Fudge Administration will fix these blunders. On the day after tomorrow, Sirius Black will be tried under veritaserum before the Wizengamot." Fudge declared imperiously.

Cyrus simply nodded, wheeled about and strode out, followed by Harry with Ceridwin on his arm. Once out of sight, all three activated their Portkeys back to the travelling chamber at Potter Castle.

* * *

For the next day and a half, the trio spent hours upon hours learning and practicing healing spells and creating potions should Sirius be released, something they believed was highly likely. A few experiments later and Harry found that Phoenix song while healing spells were being cast would increase the power of the spells, while the addition of Phoenix tears to healing potions would massively increase their potency. Harry managed to continue sneaking through many ancient and forgotten healing spells onto Cygnus, hoping to save his life.

The next day, the trio could be found sat around the Black seat of the Wizengamot were Cygnus was sat, Harry had also given him proxy powers over the Potter and Peverell seats for the emergency session which Fudge called.

"Good morning Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot;" began Fudge; "Today, the Fudge Administration begins to fix the failures of Bagnold. The Scion of a Noble and Most Ancient House was imprisoned without trial. Whether he is found guilty or not, the Ministry will bring about justice. Interrogators, Madam Amelia Bones, Regent Lady Bones and Head of the DMLE, Cornelius Oswald Fudge, Minister of Magic. Court Scribe Master Reginald Alphard."

"Council for the Defence, Regent Lord Cygnus Black!" announced Cygnus as he stood from the Black seat.

"Aurors, bring in the accused;" called Fudge; "Sirius Orion Black."

Uproar reigned as, shrugging off the Aurors, a tall, gaunt man strode in, stood straight, his gaze roving over the entire Wizengamot, his grey eyes narrowing as he took note of the James Potter replica sat next to Cygnus. After a few seconds, he seated himself in the chained chair with elegance differing from his ragged appearance. Fudge slammed his gavel down on the desk before him until silence resumed.

"How you, Sirius Orion Black plead to the charges of accessory to the murders of James Charlus and Lillian Marie Potter, accessory to the attempted murder of Harry James Potter on the 31st of October 1981 and the murders of Peter Pettigrew and twelve muggles on the 1st of November of that year?" Fudge boomed.

"First, Hadrian James Polaris Potter-Black is my godson's and blood-adopted son's name. Secondly, I plead not guilty with willingness to undergo trial by veritaserum or trial by oath as I would have died before betraying James and Lily." Sirius stated clearly; "A trial which I have been awaiting for over a decade."

Cygnus stood again, staring at Fudge;

"Yes Lord Black?"

"I want no doubt as to the outcome of this trial, I want firstly an oath on the charges, an oath of truth followed by the recitation of the events of 1981 followed by a second recitation under veritaserum." Cygnus barked.

"Sirius Black, would you be willing to undergo Lord Black's suggestions?" asked Fudge.

"I am willing to undergo all of his suggestions." Sirius answered.

"QUARTERMASTER! An oath wand and a vial of veritaserum!" called the monocled witch next to Fudge.

A few seconds later and a red robed man strode in with a vial of clear liquid and a short wand with two orange striped at it's hilt which he placed in Sirius' hand.

"I, Sirius Orion Black, do solemnly swear on my life, my magic and my soul that I did neither betray the Potter family to Lord Voldemort or murder Peter Pettigrew and the dozen muggles who died that day. I further swear that I did NEVER serve the man known as the Dark Lord Voldemort. So mote it be. I, Sirius Orion Black do swear on my life that the following events are true to the best of my knowledge. So mote it be." Sirius swore; "At Hogwarts, James, myself, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew were part of a tightly knit group. When the Potters went into hiding, Remus was often on missions trying to dissuade some of the wolf packs from serving Voldemort and couldn't be trusted with information as he was so often at risk. So, it came down to Peter and I. I was the obvious choice and therefore, James, Lily and myself chose to make Peter the Secret Keeper and I was a decoy. Daily, I made checks on Peter and the Potters. The evening of the 31st, Peter's flat was empty, no sign of combat, so I rushed to Godric's Hollow. The scene haunts me even now, James, Lily dead. I gave Harry to Hagrid, believing he would be cared for as I went to find Peter. I hunted him down to the Cardiff street where he screamed about my betrayal, and in rapid succession, cast a cutting curse to remove a finger and a blasting hex which detonated the flammable gas beneath the street. He quickly changed into his rat Animagus form and scurried off down the sewers, having hit me with a lump of rubble which put me further into shock. A rat with a missing toe, remember that."

Five minutes later and Sirius' story was confirmed under veritaserum, although due to the nature of the potion, it was much abbreviated.

"Sirius Orion Black, by oath and by veritaserum, you have been cleared of the charges levelled against you." Fudge announced pompously; "Once you have been sufficiently healed, please report to the DMLE for your reserve Auror commission and reparations for false imprisonment. I hope today's trial shows that we, the British Ministry and her senior staff are willing to champion justice."

He then slammed his gavel down and the dull roar of voices began to rise around the chamber. A St. Mungo's healer bustled up to Sirius and handed him a standard Portkey, not noticing as it was switched with an identical copy with a different location by one of the dozens seated around the Wizengamot chamber. It was only when Sirius vanished that Cygnus and his charges activated their own Portkeys to Potter Castle.

Landing in the travelling chamber, Harry burst out laughing;

"Hah! Perfect switching spell and nobody noticed!"

"Harry? Cygnus?" asked Sirius from the ragged heap on the floor, a healthy amount of distrust aimed to the latter.

"Yep, I've been staying with Harry and Ceridwin since early in the summer. Corrupting them with Black-mania, teaching them to kill halfbreeds;" he said sarcastically; "Were they to see Lucius Malfoy they might kill him as he and his spawn are part ferret part banshee. Now get up, you need to get healed up."

Sirius let lose a slight snigger at Cygnus' description of his son-in-law and grandson as he slowly rose from the floor and was escorted to a bedroom and directed to get a bath after downing a pepper-up potion. An hour and three baths later and Sirius was no longer encased in the filth and grime of Azkaban, being tended to by his godson while lying in a massive, velvet-hung four-poster bed.

Harry administered a liquid retention potion followed by three multi-purpose healing potions, a blood replenishing potion, a muscle growth potion, a nerve regeneration potion, a vial of skele-gro and a vial of undiluted phoenix tears, a concentrated vitamin potion and a nutrition supplement potion before hitting Sirius with a sleeping charm which would have him asleep until, the next morning.

Harry simply spent the rest of the morning lying on a chaise longue, his head on Ceridwin's lap as she read through a book on Potter Family spells. Eventually, after a light lunch, Cygnus persuaded the inseparable duo into duelling practice, putting them through dodging drills and accuracy drills.

Harry had found that when he partially performed Phoenix transformation and changed his eyes, he could see the layers of magic on objects, he could zoom in, could see through concealment charms and could see the buildup of magic before Cygnus cast a spell and was able to recognise some of those he more often used and take appropriate actions.

Using this, Harry and Ceridwin completely confounded Cygnus as their spells hit the targets at a hundred feet with ease every time and seemed to be able to anticipate most spells he cast. The elder Black continued to insist on putting them under silencing charms until they ceased ever casting verbally which was irritating, though they saw the need for it. Instead of learning to non-verbally cast at the end of their Hogwarts careers, Harry and Ceridwin would get into the habit of doing so long before.

Both were regularly casting cutting curses, bludgeoning hexes and blasting curses in their duels, along with stunning spells, binding hexes, petrification spells and disarming charms, something that most wouldn't be able to do by the OWLs.

Dinner at Potter Castle was eaten in comfortable silence, each of the three elegantly eating the fish and pasta which the Potter house elves had painstakingly prepared. It had taken two nights and lots of stinging hexes to instill proper table manners in Harry, who had more often than not been the house elf, not the consumer of the food before Hogwarts.

Finally, Harry slid into the purple and gold velvet covers of his bed in the Master Bedroom of Potter Castle, sighing contentedly as he wrapped an arm around Ceridwin as she slipped in beside him.


	5. Time and Fate screw over Harry Potter

Snorting heavily, the black charger leapt over a fallen tree. He was cantering down an ancient road, a Roman one, long since forgotten, buried in vegetation, trees and magical concealment. On his back was a powerfully built man, dressed in a composite armour of basilisk hide and chainmail under a black robe and black hood.

Master Unspeakable Hunter, otherwise known as Hadrian 'Harry' Potter was searching. A rumoured Roman site was leaking large amounts of dark magic and it was so far off the beaten track that a horse was the only way in, despite only being ten miles from Hogwarts. He had a single spear slung in a space-expanded holster slung from the saddle, already coated in the blood of an Inferius, while his sword, a hand-and-a-half bastard sword, hung on his left him while three wands and a battle-staff sat in a wrist-holster.

At seventeen years old, he'd killed Voldemort. On his sixteenth birthday, Harry was recruited as an Unspeakable. By Christmas that year, with the use of temporal dilation spells, he was fully trained in martial arts, firearms, melee weapons and massive amounts of magic.

At the age of twenty, Unspeakable Hunter was one of the most powerful, most skilled and most deadly fighters on the planet. However, he wasn't expecting the sphere of silver light as it burst in a shock-wave under Achilles' hooves.

He was nearly thrown from the saddle as they lurched into a whirlpool of darkness, lurching as the black charger's hooves made contact with solid earth. Despite the horse's rearing and panic, Harry gripped tightly and stayed in the saddles until Achilles calmed.

He found himself on a cobbled road, surrounded by woodland, the road itself rather dilapidated, yet still there, though in places covered by mud. Firstly casting a mapping charm, Harry found himself exactly where he had been moments before. Five different mapping charms later and he was ready to kill someone. A Tempus Anno charm later and he was intent on killing someone.

**July 1000 AD**

Mentally going over what he had, Harry was immensely pleased that he had a semi-automatic M1911 chambered in .357, though less pleased that he had only around a hundred rounds. His Unspeakable survival kit had around a thousand galleons, the only usable currency that was in the kit.

Sighing irritably, he dug his heels into Achilles' flank, heading to Hogwarts as it was likely the best place to try and set up a return to his own time. Though the black charger had a bad habit of bucking slightly, especially when he was wheeling about and charging back, Harry was immensely fond of him. A large horse, he could carry three people with little strain and a fourth if necessary, he could sense Harry's instructions mentally, could fight or be a gentle mount, depending on what he was commanded to be.

Around twenty minutes later at a sustained light canter, Harry came across a group of people, two women surrounded by a group of men, a dozen in all, clad in what looked like burlap. The two women were wearing nondescript robes of a forest-green colour.

Extending his senses, Harry firstly scanned the two women with Legilimency, not invading their privacy but simply copying the languages they knew across to his own mind. However, a quick glance showed the intent of the group of men, they were bandits, preying on those who travelled the roads in small groups, robbing, kidnapping and usually murdering their targets.

Achilles' hooves were almost silent as he charged forward, Harry's spear hanging in a low grip along his right flank. The first thrust took a bandit through the throat before the leaf-bladed head was wrenched out and thrown in the air where he caught it in a reversed grip, hurling it over his shoulder like a javelin, taking another bandit through the heart.

Leaping of the horse's back, Harry's boots slammed into one of the men, moments before his sword was jammed between his ribs. Swiftly withdrawing the blade from the dead outlaw, he countered a blow and used a bit of elegant sword-work to pierce the attacker's stomach, injecting a horrific number of poisons and other substances which were imbued in the metal.

Sending out two powerful Legilimency probes, he fried and shredded the recipients' minds, bringing the total number of dead to six, leaving another six. Flipping the sword over, Harry reversed his grip on it so that it was aligned with his arm, slashing at stomach level to take out a seventh target before letting go momentarily as he returned his grip on the sword to the proper direction and lunging forward.

The two women were casting spells in multiple directions as the final four bandits sent curses at them, having replaced blades with wands.

Harry ceased holding back, slamming his blade tip-down into the ground before letting a wand leap from the wrist-holster into his hand. His first spell landed on target, pinkish fluid flowing from the unfortunate victim as his organs were liquefied. The second spell in his chain was a lance of fire, white hot and in the shape of his spear. Ten down, two to go.

One was brought down under the combined spellwork of the two women as Harry struck down the last one with a series of lightning bolts, two from the sky and one from his wand. Slipping into light meditation, he reined in his aura as he was visibly leaking magic, something that a wizard, even as powerful as Dumbledore, would have trouble doing.

Gradually, the suffocating levels of magic he was outputting were withdrawn and he holstered his wand before summoning his sword and spear to him, hitting them both with cleaning charms as they flew through the air. All wandlessly. He directed his sword to land in its sheath before tucking the spear into the leather quiver on Achilles' saddle before turning to the women.

"You two okay?" he asked in their common language.

"Fine. Thanks for the help, neither of us is particularly good at martial magic." replied the tall, willowy woman with long blonde hair; "Our associates don't believe women should learn such magic."

"Idiots." Harry snorted; "It's up to you what magic you should learn, not what someone else dictates. Where are you headed?"

"Hogwarts Castle." answered the shorter woman with dark brown hair.

Harry pushed back his hood, showing long raven-black hair tied back in the pureblood fashion such as he'd seen Lucius Malfoy wear when arresting Hagrid. His emerald eyes bored into their souls, and two scars lined his face, a long, thin one across one cheek and a lightning bolt one on his forehead.

Once again drawing his wand, he banished the twelve bodies into a single pile and set them alight before transfiguring Achilles' saddle into a much longer one.

"Coincidence has me headed the same way as you ladies, if I may offer you a ride?" asked Harry.

They both accepted and climbed onto Achilles' back behind Harry who kicked him lightly and took off at a canter, heading to Hogwarts. Despite not having gone any further with his mental probe than learning their languages, Harry already had a fair idea who they both were, though the taller defied the modern descriptions of Helga Hufflepuff.

It took around half an hour to reach Hogwarts as Achilles' had to slow for his increased burden. The castle was a much more fortified building than in Harry's own time, windows were smaller, less open to attack. Towers were crenellated, adorned with machicolations and the keep, which was in his time the main building, was set on a motte surrounded by curtain walls.

After trotting through the gatehouse and heading up to the keep, Harry dismounted and helped each of the ladies from the saddle before tying Achilles up and following them into the castle.

"You didn't tell us your name." commented the brown-haired woman.

"Hadrian Hunter." Harry replied, using the extended version of his first name and his codename.

In the Great Hall were a group of a dozen adults from a tall, bald man with a slight goatee to an attractive young woman with raven-black hair.

"Madam Helga, Madam Rowena, we weren't expecting you this soon. And company." commented a stately man with a blonde ponytail and a small beard on his chin.

"This is Hadrian Hunter, an accomplished swordsman and dueller." Helga introduced.

"Do you think he would be willing to teach fighting?" asked the blonde wizard.

"He better be willing to prove his skill." added the eldest wizard, his voice like layers of silk running against each other.

"If you wish to duel." Harry commented.

A moment later, the hall was cleared and the eldest, the bald, goateed Salazar Slytherin was stood on a raised piste opposite Harry who hadn't even allowed a drop of magic out of his body or even drawn a wand, compared to the other man who was doing his best to intimidate him.

"You don't mind if I don't hold back?" Salazar asked smoothly.

"If you don't mind me holding back a bit for you?" replied Harry as he bowed stiffly.

Slytherin brought his wand up to begin a spell. Harry brought his hand up, wand sliding from the holster even as he slung his favourite spell-chain toward Slytherin. Organ liquefier, head exploder, decapitation, blood boiler, flesh incinerator. Having sent off a dark arts spell-chain, he began a series of grey spells, mainly the extremely powerful Adhaereat cutting curses accompanied by obliteration curses, explosive castration curses and trident piercing curses.

With Slytherin fending off a storm of spells, Harry took a symbolic step back and holstered his wand, waiting for the man to emerge from the cloud of smoke from the burning piste. In hindsight that was stupid as he was engulfed by white-hot flames. Wrenching control of the flames from Salazar, he turned it into a hurricane, an inferno of a storm.

Emerging from the fire, Harry's eyes were glowing a demonic killing curse green and his aura, a matte black sphere around him, was spitting lightning bolts every which way as a furious gale-like wind swirled his hair and billowed his cloak. A different wand dropped into his hand, lengthening to nearly six feet of obsidian-black wood crowned by a massive emerald. A constant stream of dark curses from simple pain cursed to dozens of different physical injury spells spewed from the staff toward Slytherin.

Twirling it with ease, he slammed it into the piste, creating a thousand darts in front of him before sending them off with the barest flick of his hand. A small part of Harry's brain directed his aura to absorb the stream of dark curses whistling toward him as he swung his staff around, grabbing control of the Fiendfyre obliterating his darts and redirecting it back onto its caster, augmented by a stream from his staff.

Though he'd barely broken a sweat, Harry began to rein in his magic as it was trying to control him instead of being controlled. As Slytherin fought against the self-sustaining hellfire, Harry was chanting a long incantation. Sand swept from his staff, the entire hall heating up drastically and finally, a dozen jackal-humanoid figures burst from the sand, wielding sickle-like blades.

Summoning took a lot of magic, but he was powerful enough to do repeated summonings. Using the excess magic he was exuding to power the summoning, Harry finally regained control of his magic, shrinking and holstering his staff. Slytherin was carving up his summons with sword and wand, locked in a heated duel with the last, most powerful one of them.

Allowing his opponent to dispose of the jackal-like creatures, he drew his sword as Slytherin charged him. Harry countered a blow and swept Slytherin's legs out from under him before somersaulting backwards to avoid a wandless slicing curse.

Once again, Harry waited for Slytherin as he returned to his feet and attacked. This time, Harry parried the lunge to his left hand side with his sword turned point down, using his elbow to attack as he slammed it into Slytherin's solar plexus and knocked him out.

Twirling the blade in a show of slight arrogance, Harry brought it up into a salute before spinning it over once in his hand and slamming it home in the sheath on his hip.

"A most invigorating duel." he commented as he jumped off the piste, landing lightly on the stones below.

For the first time, Harry noticed how the walls were pitted with scars, scorch marks and other damage from the furious fight, mostly from the immense number of dark spells he'd fired with his staff.

Returning his staff to his hand, he used a series near-ritualistic spells; cleaning spell, magic cleansing spell and finally a large-scale repair spell one after another. With the hall returned to proper order, Harry shrank and holstered the staff and strode over to where the others were coming out from behind a powerful shield and several layers of conjured stone. With a slight flick of his hand, he tore down the shield in an impressive display of wandless magic.

"Do I qualify?" Harry asked with a raised eyebrow as he looked to those emerging from behind the shields.

He inwardly sighed at the obvious hunger in the eyes of the three women, not that any of them were any less than beautiful, but Harry didn't want a shallow relationship based on, at best, physical attraction. Due to the end of line clauses for the House of Black and House of Potter, he'd very nearly been forced into a Ministry-arranged multiple marriage. It was that, amongst other things, that pushed him into the anonymity of Unspeakable life.

"I think so..." said the blonde-haired wizard dryly as his companion, a much older, auburn haired wizard gaped.

"Indeed Myrddin, he's got to be something to beat Salazar! Sal's not a master dueller without reason." added the auburn haired wizard.

"Godric, remember both you and Salazar are ageing." warned the one woman whose identity was still unknown, raven-haired, elegant and powerful.

"Don't think that Salazar is any less a fighter for his age Morgana." reprimanded Myrddin.

Grinning slightly, Harry idly spun a long, thin-bladed dagger in his left hand as he watched the five conscious people other than himself debating whether Slytherin's fighting skill had deteriorated with age. Eventually it was a silver blur spinning around both hands, swapping every few seconds as he skilfully manipulated the weapon.

Tiring of fooling around after a few minutes of bored blade-spinning, he slid it back into the sheath sewn into the interior of his right sleeve. Looking over toward the group, Harry was slightly irritated as he noticed them gaping. The very slight frown that appeared must have warned them as their gaping ceased and Myrddin cleared his throat.

"So, would you be willing to teach combat magic?" he asked.

"I would indeed." Harry replied.

He was just contemplating any terms he would demand before forcing himself to resist the urge to let loose a bout of maniacal laughter. In a massively warded and expanded pocket of his robe was a collection of rather precious items. The three Deathly Hallows, one of two Philosopher's Stones made by Nicholas Flamel and given to him to help win the war, Riddle's wand, a ward destroying device, a dozen wardstones and a collection of very rare books.

"Though, you seem awfully eager to gain a teacher who you know nothing of but my name and the fact that I am a somewhat able fighter?" commented Harry.

At this, Myrddin seemed to visibly tire; "We have suffered losses. There is a group called the Dark Order who thrive on control of our world and chaos in what they cannot or will not control. So far we have been attacked five times in the last month, only one a pitched battle. We are effectively under siege. Anyone willing to help break their hold on the castle is welcome."

"Then you should practice constant vigilance!" Harry barked; "You know very little about me, some of which could be faked. I could have killed your colleague in that duel. You ought to have some kind of safety precaution against infiltration by this Dark Order. Are any of the rest of you good duellers?"

"It has been a while but I'm a battle mage." replied Myrddin as he drew a wand and stepped up to the piste, gently banishing Salazar off.

Grinning in a shark-like manner, Harry moved to the piste, letting a wand drop into his hand as he slid beneath a fan of a dozen stunning spells. He retaliated with a constant jet of fire which spewed from his wand, engulfing the entire duelling stage. Just as he swept aside the fire, Myrddin was forced to blast his way out of a group of stone roots as they tried to entangle him.

As Harry found himself under attack from a gale, interspersed with both horizontal and vertical lightning bolts, he continued grinning and let loose his aura which grew steadily with every lightning bolt that slammed into him. Replacing wand with staff, he harnessed that power, he poured it out into the summoning of half a dozen Anubite warriors and set them on his opponent.

With the jackal-headed humanoid fighters advancing on Myrddin, Harry took a moment to stream sand everywhere before pulling it up into a tornado with the manipulation of the air into a maelstrom current. With a sandstorm around him, he was confident few curses would be able to hit him and maintaining the typhoon didn't take much power, especially as each of his focuses had the Dementor-esque ability to suck some magic out of their surroundings.

Resisting the urge to laugh maniacally, he sent the storm off toward Myrddin as a similar storm of salt engulfed him. He didn't bother to resist the urge to laugh maniacally before chanting a long incantation in an eastern language. The alchemical spell turned salt into metal. What he was doing was slightly different. The salt reformed into a ferocious fifteen-foot golem of gleaming metal.

With a large amount of self-satisfaction, Harry sent the monstrous construct after his opponent and stepped back to see how he would manage it. Apparently Myrddin would manage quite well. The first of his Anubites was torn apart by vines, the second boiled in a summoned geyser, the third barbecued in a stream of fire, the fourth attacked brought down by a pack of wolves which Harry killed with ease, the fifth wrapped in arms of stone which crushed it and the sixth flayed by a typhoon of ice shards.

Warding himself a small space, Harry conjured a comfortable padded armchair and pulled an unlabelled bottle from inside his robe and sat back as his gigantic golem was brought to bear on the battle mage. Over the next ten minutes, surprisingly little damage was done to it until Myrddin performed an incredibly difficult and dangerous piece of battle magic called the Tartarus Gate, opening a portal into the void and flinging his construct into it.

Not bothering to rise from his seat, he sent off a continuous stream of bludgeoning hexes, stunning spells, shield-piercing curses, petrification spells, binding spells and other low-level combat magic. That slowly escalated into blasting curses, severing hexes, fire charms and bone-breaking hexes.

Eventually the combination of a banishing charm and the shockwave from a blasting curse conspired with a dodged cutting curse which sent Myrddin toppling off the piste. Harry looked around the observers with what was clearly a questioning look.

"No thanks, I'll stick to not being humiliated thanks." said the auburn-haired wizard, Godric Gryffindor.

"Shame. Mayhap I'll have to teach you all a bit about fighting. Never simply stick to magic, I'm probably only as good as I am in that I barely ever use shields but instead dodge spells. My magical stamina is linked to physical fitness. That and using swords, daggers and limbs is just as effective." Harry commented as he mentally poked at the wards.

Surprisingly, the Hogwarts wards were neither particularly strong or varied. They were mostly low-level defensiveness with little power. That would need to be worked on. There weren't even any anti-apparition wards. With a slight smirk, he vanished from his chair silently at the same moment as the chair vanished, Harry reappearing stood up next to the group who were stood at or leaning against a table.

"How did you do that?" demanded Rowena.

"Magic." Harry deadpanned; "Is it a skill not commonly known or used amongst you?"

"No, I've seen one wizard using it once but no others." she replied.

Harry smirked slightly and started constantly apparating. With his mental control and power, it was easy for him to constantly move around from end to end, from side to side and occasionally materialising amongst the beams of the ceiling. It was then that he sensed a change in the magic of the hall.

Engaging mage sight, he quickly found someone sneaking in through the doors under an invisibility cloak. Harry didn't even glance in that direction as he flung a bludgeoning hex, a length of steel cable and a stunning spell all from three different locations as he didn't bother ceasing his constant apparition.

After his invisible target was stunned, probably with broken bones and bound in steel cable, Harry finally ceased apparating after appearing right next to the air which was bound in steel cable. He simply summoned the invisibility cloak and moved it to a pocket where it vanished into the expanded space.

After a few moments, he found a pipette full of veritaserum which was quickly administered, three drops on the tongue.

"Why are you here?" Harry asked after enervating his prisoner.

"To map the castle and if possible, kill the defenders before tonight's attack."

With that much information, Harry decided to go for a full mind-scan and dived into his mind with Legilimency. A few moments later, he returned to his consciousness.

"Stupid bastard." he muttered; "Too bad tonight's going to be a veritable massacre."

"Any plans oh great combat magic teacher?" asked Slytherin smoothly upon coming up behind him.

"Naturally. After I am the great combat magic teacher." Harry preened; "But, I don't see any way that tonight will be anything less than a massacre. Could you show me the central wardstone, the defences on the castle however are somewhat pitiful."

He shrugged off his outer robe which itself was nothing more than a layer of comfort and aesthetic comfort. Inside was a shorter robe of pitch-black basilisk hide and Acromantula silk over a cuirass of an alchemical alloy and short patches of chainmail on each of the extremities of the cuirass. Underneath that was a silk shirt and trousers along with near-knee-length basilisk hide boots, all of which had been hidden.

Despite Harry's best efforts in reining in his magic to prevent a visible aura or even a mental one which could cause intimidation, his whole person, from blazing emerald eyes to the daggers visible in the tops of his boots, radiated a sense of power.

Salazar lead him through several passageways which seemed to skip floors, eventually emerging on what would be the seventh floor of Hogwarts with the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy in his own time at the school. Stopping at a blank wall, he paced three times before opening the door which had appeared.

Inside was a chamber of clean stone, with no noticeable seams between blocks, it seemed to be hewn from a single lump with a door on one side. Around half of one side was carved with runes and, sat on a pedestal in the centre, was a marble block recognisable as a wardstone.

Reaching into his robe, Harry quickly found a rune-scribing scalpel and was soon bringing up a selection of rune-series to the forefront of his mind. Ignoring Slytherin, Harry settled down and, after casting a few charms on the wardstone, began carving his runes into the walls.

Quite a few hours later, he'd carved a massive number of runes from various alphabets and languages around the walls and cast nearly as many wards on the wardstone, only awaiting the activation of the activation rune on the wardstone. The other change was the addition of a bowl carved into the top of the wardstone where the activation rune was, protected by a blood ward and the rune for activating the wards would only activate on the addition of the blood of someone keyed to it.

After that, Harry conjured a pile of salt and used more alchemy to turn them into six rings. Each one had a different coloured gem in it, red for Gryffindor, green for Slytherin, yellow for Hufflepuff, blue for Ravenclaw, black for himself and purple for Myrddin and Morgana. With that complete, he used a linking spell which meant that the first blood to touch each ring would key that bloodline into the wards, including complete control. He pumped a massive amount of magic into each, creating a basic level of sentience which would activate dozens of fatal curses in the rings if the wearer tried to use them for ill.

Finally, hours later, though compressed with the use of his Timeturner, Harry emerged, apparating down to the Great Hall where the four founders, Morgana and Myrddin were sat around a table.

"You took a while." commented Slytherin.

"Indeed I did." Harry answered ambiguously, walking in as he continually juggled the six rings, his own already on one finger; "I've nearly finished re-warding the castle, all I need is for all five of you to place a drop of blood on each of these rings. Note that I have enchanted them so only you can either wear or remove them and it takes a simple mental command to summon it to your side."

He placed each ring in front of each person and produced a needle from the seam of one of his sleeves. Within a minute, all that was needed was his own blood-bonding to his ring and the wards would go up. Taking the needle from Gryffindor, he wandlessly cleaned it before prodding his own left index finger, dropping a single drop of blood onto the black stone. Opening up his Occlumency shields, Harry allowed the ring to scan him before he felt the weight of the wards settle on his mind and slammed them to full power, leaching off the intercrossing ley lines below the castle.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I've got an attack force to exterminate." he commented as the warning wards swept across the landscape, finding and alerting him of a large force of wizards camped nearby.

Wandlessly summoning his outer robe, Harry pulled it on and flipped up the hood. A moment later, his eyes lit up an eldritch green through the black void of the concealment-charmed hood. A slight mist arose around him, the one battle spell which he could perform without anything other than a mental command, a Dementor-esque feeling appearing around him. His apparition was different as he wrapped himself in the mist and vanished silently, following the guidance of the outermost alarm wards.

Appearing invisibly in a small encampment, he allowed the Phobos' Mist to slowly roll over the camp. Though he was restraining the psychological part of the spell, it did give him cover to simultaneously kick a wizard into a massive industrial-size cauldron while summoning another out of a tall tree. The former gave him cover to allow the oily contents of the cauldron to flood everywhere as he pushed it over, using the deep-fried contents of it as an excuse for the toppling cauldron. The fire beneath it lit the oil afire and within moments, two were definitely dead and the camp ablaze.

Harry withdrew for nearly half an hour before the fire went out. With a dead cook and a dead sentry, he was happy to continue to attack them in the constant mist.

Five minutes later, a pack of half a dozen murderous wolves padded into the camp, tearing apart nearly a dozen wizards before they were all put down. With a certain amount of satisfaction sweeping across his face from the hidden position on a nearby hill, Harry sent off another pack of wolves before advancing down the hill.

Slipping into the camp, he looked straight through the all-encompassing mist and found chaos. Dozens were dead, torn to shreds, boiled, burnt and otherwise mutilated. Striding in, oozing confidence, he loosed the binds on the psychological part of the mist, allowing masses of fear to effect anyone but himself.

He flung a black-coloured lightning bolt from his wand, streaking through the air with a foul feeling. The dark curse fried the heart of a wizard, and though it had worked, it was mostly a psychological statement. Twirling an elegant pattern with his wand, Harry tore a pair of wizards apart with what appeared to be sword-wounds, though dozens of them appeared in line with the wand-movements.

"We have a hero..." began another wizard as he strolled in. Harry spared only enough attention to blast him apart with a powerful obliteration curse.

He then animated one of the trees, sending it on a rampage, roots acting as legs of a demented spider, lashing out every-which-way as chaos reined. He sensed someone coming up behind him and didn't even turn as he a jet of fire consumed them, bursting from the earth below him. Resisting the urge to grin, Harry stepped forward purposefully, the mist becoming so heavy that his opponents were slowly being asphyxiated as his curses sprayed everywhere.

He'd just twirled his wand over in his hand, splitting a wizard in half from shoulder to hip when he had a lightbulb moment. Applying a massive force of magic, Harry grinned as the mist coalesced around each human near him, wrapping around them. Tuning out the screams, he turned away as wizards died, crushed by the mist, deprived of air or in any one way caused by the many curses he had sent off.

Summoning a small amount of gold, a few bits of jewellery to his pockets, Harry disapparated, arriving in the Great Hall where several people were snoozing in their chairs while the others were either pacing or just sat waiting.

"And my wonderful countenance has once more returned." Harry declared as he began to pull in the Dementor-esque mist.

Gradually, he returned to normal, the eldritch-green eyes being the last feature to return to normal before he pulled off the hood of his outer robe.

"You won?" asked Slytherin expectantly.

"And it was stupidly easy. The one I suspect was leading the attack force stopped to do the evil monologue so I obliterated him. Actually, I caused two fatal accidents, set their camp on fire and set two packs of hungry wolves on them before they realised they were under attack." replied Harry.

He noticed a combination of relief and exasperation displayed clearly on most of the faces around him, except for Gryffindor who was still asleep.

"Well, Rowena, show Hadrian to one of the teacher's chambers." Slytherin.

"Of course Master Salazar." replied Rowena sweetly, looking like she would happily eviscerate Slytherin.

Harry wiped his face of the burgeoning amusement and followed her out of the Great Hall before allowing a slight smirk to appear at her muttered;

"Chauvinistic pigs."

"Indeed, a lady shouldn't be taken for granted or shunned just due to gender." he agreed.

They arrived outside an painting of a Minotaur wielding a single-headed battleaxe on the third floor, just down the corridor from his classroom.

"Fortitude." said Rowena.

The portrait swung open, showing a three-room suite with a garderobe, bedroom and dining room. Though it would need a bit of work, Harry was satisfied for the moment, save for the large amount of dust accumulated. Slashing his wand through the air, every bit of dust rushed toward him, only to be immolated by a concentrated jet of fire and a moment later, parts of the room rearranged themselves, two bearskin rugs shaking themselves out before lying back down on the floor and several torches lighting up in wall-sconces. The stone making up the floor, walls and ceiling were sanded down to a light honey colour and several small windows opened up in the walls.

"Much better." Harry commented blandly.

"You have an unusual mastery of magic." said Rowena.

"A lot of practice and a few good teachers." he replied; "But don't get overly dependant on magic, I stay physically healthy so I'm less susceptible to illnesses, I have faster reflexes, can dodge spells with much more ease and for longer. Also I can cast spells for much longer, notice that after two duels and a small battle that I'm not collapsing of magical exhaustion."

"Do you think you could teach Helga, Morgana and I?" Rowena asked hesitantly.

"I will, just don't expect it to be easy." Harry agreed and warned.

Pulling off his outer robe, he draped it over the back of a chair before walking over to the window and gazing outward, mentally catching up on what had happened and what to do now. Harry had a moderate amount of money of any use, but then, how much were Galleons worth at this time? Gringotts didn't exist in the form he knew from his own time, but an earlier bank run by the Goblin Nation did.

Creating gold with the Philosopher's Stone drained life force, which in turn would be temporarily renewed by the Elixir of Life. He didn't particularly want to be dependant on that. Most other alchemy, particularly permanent alchemy, was dependant on the use of salt, and conjured salt would last a day at most. He needed a way to refine salt for alchemy. Otherwise, he could easily hunt down anyone with a bounty on their heads, with Legilimency, apparition and stunning spells, it would be easy.

Walking through to his bedroom, Harry conjured several tasteful rugs, leaving them strewn around in a slightly haphazard manner. The windows were promptly filled with glass and a tapestry was conjured over one wall. With the predominant colours of red and dark blue, it was comforting and warm.

After conjuring a dresser, Harry dumped his basilisk hide robe and cuirass on it, followed swiftly by his sword-belt, having removed the sheathed weapon from it and put it on the side of his four-poster bed. After that, he kicked off his boots, removing the dagger stored in each. Finally, he was dressed in a green tunic over a loose grey shirt and a pair of fairly tight black trousers and socks.

It was irritating that he only had a few changes of clothes in one of the numerous concealed and expanded pockets of his basilisk hide robe, however, it was not too much of a problem.

Sliding into the bed, the slightly rough comfort of the blankets made him feel that much more at home here than anywhere else, the near anonymity of life a thousand years in the past felt so much better.

* * *

Early the next morning, Harry threw on a basilisk hide vest over his shirt and tunic. Covering those, his trousers and boots was a long robe of forest-green velvet edged with Celtic symbols, woven in black into the fabric. Pulling on his sword-belt and buckling the weapon on, he checked that he had everything he needed and was willing to remove from the heavily warded pockets of his basilisk hide robe which was still lying on the dresser.

Smirking slightly, Harry used the privileges afforded to him with the ward ring and apparated down to the Great Hall, though not before putting a disillusionment charm on himself.

Glancing around the Great Hall, Harry took a moment to observe the 'Hogwarts Family' as he christened them. After just a few seconds, he sent a fan of stunning spells across the hall before apparating to the far end. Gryffindor and Myrddin were taken out immediately with well-placed shots.

A powerful shield by Slytherin blocked the curses meant for him and the women, giving them a chance to retaliate in the direction from which he'd fired with a barrage of hexes and curses.

His next stream of stunning spells was more focused with less spells cast, more effort put into making each spell hit. However, the advantage of surprise was lost and his spells were dodged or deflected with a series of bone-breaking hexes amongst less lethal spells directed at him.

Dropping Helga with a chain of shield-breaking spells, stunning and petrification spells, Harry apparated repeatedly, wincing as he barely missed a series of cutting curses aimed at his person. Salazar was throwing detection charms and curses around the hall until Harry was forced to drop his disillusionment charm, accompanied by a continuous stream of stunning spells mixed with shield-breaking spells before disapparating.

Though he animated a roast chicken and set it on Morgana, he was forced to disapparate twice more, each time letting loose streams of curses. Appearing right between the three still standing, he fired a concussion curse right beneath his feet before apparating to the opposite side of the hall and launching dozens of stunning, binding and petrification spells into the epicentre of his concussion curse.

Harry watched with satisfaction as the two women fell, leaving only Salazar left standing, throwing a large number of dark curses after him, though not managing to land a hit because of Harry's minimal-focus-required apparition constantly changing location.

Finally, he conjured a dozen illusions of himself as he brought out his staff, creating a blizzard, complete with snow flurries, in the hall, obscuring Salazar's vision before apparating right behind him. Harry simply tapped him on the shoulder and hit him with a stunning spell the moment he spun round.

A wide sweep of his wand repaired the damage done to the hall before he levitated each of the unconscious and body-bound people into their chairs.

Setting himself down in a spare seat, Harry wandlessly summoned an apple from a carved wooden bowl before firing the counter-curses to the various spells subduing the six others. The wandless 'Arma Sinister' shield he conjured a moment later was very useful as it intercepted a barrage of curses and hexes aimed at him.

"Calm down, I just wanted to see how you'd fair in a proper fight, not a duel." Harry chastised them, idly sectioning the apple with a wandless sword curse.

"Why am I suddenly feeling like I was just beaten by someone barely into manhood?" Salazar asked the world at large.

"I assure you that I am the epitome of manhood!" Harry mock protested; "But I was holding back, not trying to kill but only stun and bind. When you couldn't work out any pattern to my movements, putting yourselves in a corner with your backs to the wall could have been helpful with a view of the entire hall."

"Still smarting that someone who is on an age-level with the girls just beat us handily." moaned Godric.

"Don't judge people on age and gender." Harry said with a sharp glare; "I'll admit to not being overly good at socialising with women as they generally end up blushing and giggling or squeaking and running away, but I had a close friend, the nearest I ever had to a sister, she was a vicious dueller who I wouldn't care to pick a fight with even on a good day."

Nodding slightly, Gryffindor drew a plain, unadorned bastard sword from a rough sheath hung at his side.

"Want to see how you fair against a swordsman?"

Harry smirked and nodded before unbuckling his sword-belt and hanging it on his chair before reaching into a pocket and withdrawing a single-handed longsword which returned from a shrunken state as it emerged.

"This blade is neither poisoned nor cursed." he explained, seeing the glances between the two swords; "This is also a better duelling sword while my other blade is designed to cut through armour, both metal and hide. A battle sword."

That was to forget the selection of blades from across the world and across time which were stowed in a shrunken trunk. Gryffindor leapt over the table, swinging his sword heavily toward Harry who frowned in disappointment and speared a leg of chicken on his sword-point, bringing it up to his mouth to chew as he danced around the numerous blows aimed at him.

Finally flicking the meat-stripped bone in Gryffindor's direction, Harry brought his blade into play, flickering in and out, constantly redirecting, misdirecting, dodging in and out from around his sword in a display of agility and skill as the two were still moving.

Harry was truly a master swordsman as he ran rings around Godric, occasionally putting bursts of bladework in instead of casually redirecting blows or simply avoiding them.

After slamming Godric into a wall, Harry moved away, watching as his opponent drew a dagger from the back of his belt. Reaching into his boot, Harry drew a fifteen-inch hunting knife made from Damascus steel, a slight recurve in the blade, a vicious serrated back edge and the curve petering off to a wickedly sharp point.

Catching the blade of Gryffindor's sword in one of the serrations, Harry twisted under his arm and planted his boot firmly in Godric's back. Parrying a dagger thrust with the crossguard of his sword, Harry used his hunting knife to twist it out of Godric's hand before sending it skimming away with a kick.

"Come on, it's like having a sword-fight with a hundred-year-old man, so slow and inept." Harry taunted.

Growling very much like the lion that was his house symbol, Gryffindor attacked with a flurry of cuts, slashes, lunges and other attacks. Harry evaded most of them while sometimes using his sword to parry attacks, and rarely, riposting. Switching his sword to his left hand and sheathing his dagger, Harry exchanged blows with Godric, steel flashing as they danced around each other, fire-light reflecting off their blades.

While Gryffindor tired, Harry was still perfectly fresh, save for a slight ache in his right arm from the flat of Godric's sword. Finally, Harry kicked the sword out of Godric's hand and swept his feet out from under him, the point of his own sword resting on his neck.

"I yield." declared Gryffindor, accepting the hand up when the sword was removed from his neck.

Harry smiled and lifted him to his feet before swapping his sword back to his right hand, eliciting a comment from Slytherin.

"You can fight with both hands Master Hunter?"

"Aye, it is useful as most people are unused to duelling a left-handed swordsman and should I be injured on the arm I am using, I can swap to the uninjured one. Then constant swapping in a fight puts people off balance a lot." Harry replied, sitting down at the table as he caught a shallow crystal bowl as it spun through the air toward him; "Do any of you know what a Pensieve is?"

Everyone either shrugged or shook their heads.

"A Pensieve displays memories, I'd rather like to have a look at the previous skirmishes with the Dark Order to see what we are up against." Harry explained as he extracted a memory from his head, dropping the silvery strand into the bowl; "Simply concentrate on the memory of the event in question, channel a small amount of magic into your wand and hold it there as you touch your wand to your temple. Withdrawing the wand will withdraw a copy of the memory and releasing the magic will drop the memory strand."

That was when he heard a screech and a loud clattering noise from the courtyard just moments before the doors were flung open. Harry, who had vaulted over the table and had a rather nasty curse on the tip of his wand froze and broke out laughing as a large griffin raced toward him.

Avoiding the massive claws of the enormous beast, Harry dodged several times.

"Sorry Helios, I didn't mean to leave you!" he exclaimed, pausing as the griffin screeched again before butting him heavily in the chest; "Yes I know, but I couldn't help it, you know I was working and that sometimes unexplainable things happen!"

Helios was one his familiars, a magnificent creature he'd raised from being a cub to a fully grown alpha male. In the wizarding world, true familiars are rare as only the very most powerful magicals attracted them.

Smiling naturally, Harry's face lit up at his long-time companion, one of the few who never tried to use him, gain something from him or outright betray him.

"Are the others following?" asked Harry. Two screeches and a bark; "So I'm still on their blacklist for a little while. Shame." Three barks and a snuffle; "You mean they intend to emotionally blackmail me? That's it, no bloody minded mammals are getting one over me!" Two screeches followed by snuffles sounding rather like suppressed laughter; "Laugh it up feather-fur-ball! I was drunk at the time! And it was only one time!" Continued laughter; "Right! That's it! I'm not talking to you!"

Harry stalked off in high dudgeon, muttering about 'cheeky familiars', 'feathered brats' and a selection of choice insults. Unfortunately, he only got a few feet before a large beak grabbed him by the back of his cloak and deposited him back in the Great Hall.

"Feathered house-cat!" Harry exclaimed with a death-glare directed at his familiar who simply turned around and curled up in one corner of the Great Hall before glancing to the table where the Pensieve was filled.

Striding over, Harry immediately immersed himself in the memories, coming out a few short minutes later, looking troubled.

"So, use a mixture of magically enhanced mundane siege weaponry and purely magical attacks. Forces composed of a mixture of both magical and non. However, the magicals are somewhat inept, cannon fodder. They rely on strength of numbers, fear and a few dark curses." he surmised, rubbing his temples; "Counter siege weaponry with Greek Fire. Create our own siege weaponry to use against massed forces."


	6. Mad Harry Churchill

Walking down a street in the late evening after having gone to meet his elder brother at a local pub, a stately gentleman in his mid-seventies moved, despite his age, with the dangerous grace which many martial artists would envy. He caught a sharp cry on the cool wind, and moving carefully, found a child lying on the doorstep of the house, complete with a letter tucked into the thin blanket he was wearing.

Though usually he'd say it wasn't his business, anyone who'd do this wasn't worth giving the consideration of privacy. Opening the letter, his eyes widened as he read through it.

_Dear Petunia,_

_Unfortunately, James and Lily Potter died yesterday in an attack on their safe-house by the wizarding terrorist Lord Voldemort. I plead with you to take their orphaned son in to seal the blood-protection of your sister's sacrifice, making it impossible for any harm to befall you from wizards. I must warn you of the repercussions that would come of your refusal. I expect Harry to be humble and modest, as in the wizarding world, he would become big-headed as it was at his hands that Voldemort fell, and as he is a wizarding aristocrat, something that he must not realise._

_Yours,_

_Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Order of Merlin First Class, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and Grand Sorcerer._

He'd seen the devastation wrought by ill-minded wizards working with the Nazis during the Second World War, and the boy would have a chance to live or he wasn't Thomas Bell Lindsey Churchill, Major-General of the British Army, retired. At least his irritating brother would be amused. Mad Jack would probably laugh his head off at him while his wife cooed over the boy.

* * *

**September 9th 2005**

Chewing on his pipe, Captain Hadrian Churchill of 42 Commando scrolled through map after map. Frankly, he was bored, the desert sun wasn't helping, though the cooling effect of the villa they'd taken over in Baghdad's Green Zone did help. Once owned by one of 'Saddam's little butt-monkeys', as they crudely put it, it served a better purpose.

The only thing unusual about the sight was that, unlike most of 42 Commando, he wasn't wearing a green beret, nor were any of his colleagues. Drawn from dozens of regiments, they all shared the tan beret of the SAS. Using their old units as cover, or 'parent regiments', they were the toughest bastards out of almost every special forces unit out there, proud members of A Squadron, 22 SAS.

"What do you think Dai?" he asked.

Dai, 'the Welsh wizard' was their intelligence interpreter, or as the mockingly crude comments of the SAS put it, he did 'clever shit'.

"Well... much as I'm loathe to trust them after their screw-ups, I suggest we put a drone onto our boyo and keep eyes on him for a day or two." he said slowly.

They were chasing a group of men they suspected of being part of a Shia militia, the Jaish al-Mahdi, responsible for the running of various death-squads and encouraging sectarian violence in the country.

Harry considered it for a minute before picking up the phone on his desk and quick-dialling a number.

"Quartermaster, this is Wolf, get me patrols Delta and Foxtrot in readiness, Echo and Golf can stand down for a while. Tell them not too get too comfortable." he ordered before hanging up and dialling a second number. A minute later, he rolled his eyes and drawled; "Captain Churchill, A Squadron of the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, personal identifier bravo-foxtrot-bravo-whisky-victor-zero-three-seven, get me Creech Air Force Base and the drone control centre."

"Look, I don't care what you think, I gave you an order, I have no need to justify it, my clearance is sufficient, you will forward my call to drone control." he barked irritably a minute later, followed just a few moments later; "I want a Predator in the Baghdad area to take my tasking... Look, I don't care if you're the director of the FBI, the CIA or the Emperor of the Galactic Republic, you'll get me the Predator or I'll reach down this telephone and personally strangle you! No, no, you're mistaking this for a democracy... it's a dictatorship."

He shot an acid glare at one of his troopers who had sniggered, before hanging up.

"Yes, I dislike the Septics, get over it. And you can all fuck off, I'll call you if we get an update."

Harry ignored the tapping on his door for a minute, glancing at his watch to see it was getting on for eleven o'clock, before eventually barking at the door;

"Get in here if it's important, if not bother one of the other officers about it."

Slowly the door opened, annoying him further.

"If you're going to come in, be smart about it!" he snapped.

With a touch more haste, an elderly man with a long beard, twinkling blue eyes, wearing grey-blue robes and a fez walked in, followed by a severe-looking woman clad in a tartan dress.

"Yes?" Harry asked impatiently.

"Are you Captain Churchill?" enquired the elderly man.

"I'd assume that given the nameplate on the door." he replied sarcastically; "Then there's the fact that you could ask any of the fairly numerous people around the Green Zone where to find me."

"Well, yes. We are looking for a boy called Harry Potter, we need to speak to him with the utmost urgency." said the bearded and robed man.

"Potter's no boy." Harry laughed, glad that he was wearing reflective sunglasses and had his beret covering most of his hair, concealing his most notable characteristics; "He's twenty-five years old and a soldier of going on ten years."

"Where can we find him?" asked the woman, speaking for the first time.

"Who are you and what do you want with him?" demanded Harry.

"I am Professor Albus Dumbledore and this is my assistant, Professor Minerva McGonagall, we were friends of his parents and worked at the school they attended and he was supposed to attend." replied the man.

"Right... you came out to the world's bloodiest warzone of the current time to speak to an old family friend. Pull the other one, its got bells on it." he snorted.

"We've also come to alert him there's a terrorist who wants to kill him, and if possible, bring him to Britain where he can be sufficiently protected." replied Dumbledore reluctantly, noting that Harry's right hand was resting on a pistol, the damage of which he didn't underestimate, having seen them used during the Grindelwald Conflict.

"The Special Air Service deals with terrorists daily. If he's a threat, we'll go after him, if not we'll let him come to us and capture or kill him." Harry said dismissively.

"I'm afraid you can't understand-" began Dumbledore.

"Look, one wizard comes after us, we capture or kill him. Done it before, we'll do it again." interrupted Harry.

"What!" the two visitors chorused, and Dumbledore's wand came up, flicking a grey-coloured spell at him.

Harry drew a length of wood from a fixture underneath his desk, and in one smooth movement, swept aside the memory-charm and flicked a Parsel disarming curse through Dumbledore's shield. Snatching the wand out of the air, Harry felt a strange tingle from it, ancient magic. A moment later, a length of rolled silvery-grey fabric streamed out from one of the pockets of Dumbledore's robes.

"Okay, one warning, cast a spell at me again and I kill you." he said seriously; "I'll let that one go as I'm sure you assumed me to be completely non-magical."

The two were gaping.

"Have you ever wondered what became of many of the first-generation magicals who were let go, especially veterans of the last Voldemort conflict twenty-four years ago? Dozens of them work for the government, including sixteen under my command here." Harry stated, leaning back into his chair; "Me, I'm a halfblood from a noble house, means fuck all to me, I'm a soldier and fucking proud."

While the two looked scandalised, neither made any comment about his language as the soldiery outside had been equally foul-mouthed. Harry swivvelled around as he heard his phone ringing.

"Yes?" he snapped, pausing for a moment before killing the call, dialling another number; "Have you Green Slimes got anything for me? Yes, do send it over." that call ended quickly and he dialled a third number; "Quartermaster, get me two armed Land Rovers, Delta and Foxtrot patrols in the briefing room in fifteen minutes, and I want a Chinook fuelled and on the flight-line in an-hour and a half... That's fine, and put up the black flag. They touch our US special forces buddies, we collect their fucking heads." he hung up finally.

Turning to the two school-teachers, he commented;

"I've got some insurgents I need to deal with. The day's coming to an end and going out there in the dark is suicide unless you're SAS, Delta or a Ranger. Grab a couple of rooms up the hall, I'll need briefing on your little insurgency which threatens one of my guys."

* * *

"Shaddup!" Harry barked, storming into the briefing room. Immediately, the eight troopers fell silent, looking forward to when their boss was off-duty, becoming a far nicer person. "We've got three targets I want to hit. One produces explosives for suicide bombers, but for the usual reasons of collateral we can't wipe it out with an air-strike. The second is the home to a gunsmith we reckon is spreading the love, AK style, the third is a mid-level local commander."

Harry threw the briefing documents onto the table as he pulled on a flak jacket and his Level IV body-armour. With a bit of bungee cord over his left shoulder and under his right armpit, he slung a powerful battle rifle while he'd mostly use the custom M4 lying in the chair next to him.


	7. Captain of the Evening Star

"One, two, three, block, cut, parry, riposte!" barked the powerfully-built, stubbled man.

Harry sweated and brought his sword through a series of feints, blocked, slashed towards the other man's side, was parried, blocked the riposte and counter-attacked. Ever since he was ten, in return for a couple of hours helping in the forge, the local blacksmith taught him to fight with swords. Starting with light short-swords, they were now using hand-and-a-half swords with wooden covers on the edges.

Just a few hours sweeping, organizing things, and occasionally working the forge furnace itself in return for this, Harry felt he got a good deal. Baggy robes at school hid a lot, including a slightly-scarred but heavily muscled body.

"Cut head, block, feint head, cut to flank. Good!" said Bob, the forge master and swordsman.

The elder man knew his pupil had secrets and never pried, but when Harry had admitted that there was a homicidal maniac after him at the end of his first year at boarding school, he'd increased Harry's fencing hours to four hours a day, with two hours of exercise and two of helping in the forge. The Dursley family couldn't care less, they just assumed that he was doing hard, painful and possibly dangerous chores.

It had been a few weeks since Voldemort's resurrection and he had once again upped lessons to three two-hour sessions a day and each was more intense than those before.

With a feint to the Bob's flank, Harry drew his sword back and began to curve it upward to bring it down for a strike to his head, but then suddenly dropped it into a two-handed lunge where the wood-covered tip impacted the blacksmith's stomach. He had gradually been growing better as a swordsman.

Twice more, they fenced and Harry struck through his guard to hit him.

"That is it." said Bob, sheathing his sword and throwing it onto a workbench; "I have nothing more to teach you."

Reaching behind the scruffy, smoke-blackened desk which served as his office, he pulled out a sword, with a circular pommel engraved with Anglo-Saxon patterns, a hand-and-a-half grip wrapped in dark-red leather, a plain, slightly upswept cross-hilt guard and a broad blade with a single deep fuller running some distance toward the tip, but the strange natural patterning of the metal was what set it aside.

"About a decade ago, researchers at Stanford University, California, managed to recreate Damascus steel. The metal, with a touch of modern technology, is one of the best ever created." he stated, handing the sword to Harry. Despite it being a heavy weapon, being more than just a small-sword, it was perfectly balanced and suited him well. Then a dark-red leather sheath was thrown his way, the tip, mouth and halfway down it were wrapped in silvery metal with the same Saxon patterns both sewn into the leather and engraved into the metal.

Two plainer daggers in black leather sheaths followed.

"I've got a cousin who told me a month ago about you. Muggleborn he calls himself. From what he told me, you'll need these." grunted Bob, smirking at the boy's shocked expression as he picked up a belt from behind the desk; "Friend of mine made the sheaths and the belt, blades are my own. If you can work some of the hocus-pocus he described, make 'em better, I'd be happy. I'd be happier if you survive what my cousin described. Get in close and gut the bastards."

"I-I don't know what to say." Harry stuttered as the sword was sheathed, put on the belt with the daggers and tied about his waist.

"Then don't say anything. Remember, you're a free person, be free. Don't let others control you, don't let others kill you. I did a few years in the commandos, I'm no stranger to death, and sometimes the best way to save someone is to kill a whole load of others. Always go into a fight with the bigger knife or end it from afar." stated Bob and turned him around, unstrapping the belt and putting the contents in a large black bag. "Don't want to get the police annoyed with you carrying around a blade like that."

* * *

"You mean to say that Lord Potter is aware that with the Triwizard Tournament that he came into his inheritance?" growled the fierce looking goblin.

Stood awkwardly in his only smart shirt, tie and slacks that weren't Hogwarts clothes, Harry allowed the goblin by his side to reply. They were in a Spartan office, with a thick oak door covered by metal studs. Unlike the 18th Century French-style furniture of all the other offices he passed, this one had one large desk, several bookcases and a number of weapons and animal heads littering it. Definitely the home of a warrior.

"I am afraid so Blademaster Grimrock." replied the goblin stood next to him.

"Then I'll sum it up. Potter vaults drained through a series of wars in the last century. Lots of artefacts in the family vault and about ten-thousand galleons in your own." growled Grimrock; "The old Potter manor is essentially derelict and Potter castle uninhabited. A skeleton crew of about a thousand werewolves live in a small village in the grounds of the latter and the merchant fleet of a dozen ships is down to the flagship, a sixty-four gun war galleon. You have the title of Lord Potter on the wizard's Wizengamot and a non-magical title of Earl of Ravenscroft."

"That sums it up." Harry said in amusement and then asked; "What do I do to claim this and what is the current pound-to-galleon rate?"

"A magical declaration will activate all our paperwork and that of the College of Arms. While the Potters were once the most powerful of the Ancient and Most Noble Houses, they have declined to just you, however, to take up the title of Earl would require a visit to the Queen." replied Grimrock; "And the rate is five pounds per galleon."

"Could you withdraw a thousand galleons from my account, half in pounds." Harry smirked; "I look forward to much profit for myself and for Gringotts."

"Then I will either laugh with you over a mug of Goblin Grog or laugh at your pitiful attempt at life." shrugged the goblin, throwing a small leather pouch to him.

* * *

Harry was never more glad than then that he'd removed the trace from his wand and learnt from Sirius how to apparate. He'd just spent two-thousand pounds on a load of broken antique furniture, which he was assured would once have fetched a hefty price. A few repairing charms later and he'd hired a van and driver to transport it to a big antique showroom.

Two days of lounging at the Dursleys later and he'd just received a call on his newly-bought phone informing him of a thirty-thousand pound income. Smirking, Harry repeated this again. Once he started, he couldn't stop. By the end of the week, he had a comfortable balance in his Gringotts account of thirty-thousand galleons.

Acquiring a Portkey to the Potter Castle Estate was easy and he strode down straight to the small village on the banks of a river estuary where he could see masts rising out from beyond the houses. A few people came out from the stone cottages as he walked down to the quayside, all of them with the small signs of the werewolf curse.

"Word is the new Potter's in town." growled a voice behind him.

"That's me." Harry stated, wheeling about, his smart dark-blue suit and long coat covering the fact he was wearing both sword and two daggers.

"Mayor, at least unofficially, of the Stockade, Jim Hunter." introduced the man.

Harry greeted him with a polite smile and a firm handshake;

"I've been wondering, what would it take to outfit the ship;" he asked, gesturing to the massive galleon, two decks of cannon ports wreathed in elegantly carved wood, a sloping rear and a low forecastle with two forward-facing bow-chase cannons; "And have her ready to sail."

"Two thousand galleons." replied Jim immediately; "We could carry a cargo worth that in one run though."

"Why don't we use larger ships, not old warships to transport cargoes." asked Harry.

"Nobody tell ya son?" Jim said, throwing an arm around his shoulder; "Some magical substances, being most potion ingredients, don't react well to concentrations of metal for any length of time. That's why you have specific metals for cauldrons for specific potions."

Harry nodded his understanding;

"What would be a normal run?" he enquired.

"Give us a week to outfit her, sail down the Channel, pick up a few things from the Veela colonies on the North Coast of France, stop at Brest for the magical jewellers, head down the Bay of Biscay, San Sebastian in Northern Spain, Lisbon for its cork and other wood, the coast a few miles from Seville for its fruit. Then Casablanca in Morocco where we offload the Lisbon wood, European fish and Seville fruit." replied Jim; "Mind we haven't done this in about a decade, but we could probably arrange it with ease. We pick up leathers and suchlike from Casablanca, the posh Europeans can't be without their smart leathers as dragonhide is only for those who need the rough protectiveness of it. Also furniture is a good one to bring back from Morocco. Bring it here, we offload it and sell it for the Potter family, though we get a small payment from your vault and free living here in return for coming to arms when called. You get the rest."

Raising an eyebrow at the fact he had a private army on his payroll he didn't know about, Harry commented;

"Won't people notice an incredibly ornate war galleon sailing into ports?"

"Nah, mixture of illusions and confounding charms active when we get close to the coast." said Jim; "You might tread on a few feet though."

"Oh?" Harry said.

"Malfoy family, Nott family, and a few other Death Eater scum." scoffed Jim.

"Can we outrun or out-gun them?"

"Up for a bit of piracy Master Potter." Jim smirked; "We can do both. I personally would swarm their ships and take them as prizes."

"Modern weaponry would eliminate the need to swarm their ships." Harry commented to himself.

"What's that Master Potter?" asked Jim.

"Modern military weapons, you could kill someone at a mile, more or less." Harry shrugged; "Haven't any of you seen a rifle."

"We have, load it with a bit of canvas soaked in palm oil, then put in some gunpowder and then the shot." Jim replied.

Harry burst out laughing;

"Those went out of fashion about a hundred and fifty years ago. I'm talking automatic rifles which can empty a thirty-round magazine in three seconds and hit accurately at over three-hundred yards. They're the light weapons of the modern age. There are heavier things. The best place to acquire them would be America. How many flintlock weapons do we have?"

"Several thousand." answered Jim.

"You see, antique weapons like those are worth quite a bit, thousands of galleons, while modern firearms from the right places are less. Set the ship up for the European run, and then we'll go transatlantic, pick up something like cotton, tobacco or sugar from the old colonies, pick up firearms and head back here." Harry mused, looking around at the other rather derelict, smaller ships; "I, the new Potter, want to pull this lot together. And cut off the support of the Death Eaters if it's coming from shipping."

* * *

A week later, with all sails deployed, in the darkness of the English Channel at night, the lone galleon broke out, racing west, eager not to be found by camera-happy photographers.

The Evening Star was running with a full crew and an empty hold, an adventure of sea and magic ahead.


	8. Send in the tin soldiers!

_Harry Potter timeline set back five years_

**June 1990**

Harry was sat in one of the Hogwarts courtyards, contemplating, when he was pulled out of his thoughts by two people sitting down next to him. Hermione Granger, though flawed, highly intelligent and immortally loyal. Ron Weasley, a good strategist but insecure due to his position in the family.

"Mate, how're you doing." asked Ron gently, knowing it had only been a few days since Cedric's death and the Ministry of Magic had already launched a propaganda campaign.

Harry silently scraped a rune into the pillar next to it and pressed his wand against it. A silencing rune, something he'd learnt recently to help with stealth, he already had them woven into his clothes and carved into his shoes.

"Harry-" began Hermione, seeing the ward come up.

"You asked a question Ron, here's my answer. Very irritated and a bit confused. I've come to the conclusion that the wizarding world is fucked beyond belief."

"Language Harry!" Hermione chided.

Ignoring her, he ploughed on.

"Have you noticed how Britain's magical world is ruled? It's an oligarchy, ruled by a handful of powerful purebloods, most of whom are purists, or well-meaning traditionalists." Harry commented; "Have you noticed why you can't use non-magical items here, but Diagon Alley, in central London, doesn't create a spot where you can't use electronics?"

"You think..." began Hermione.

"Two options, there's an enchantment on Hogwarts to break electronic objects or one on Diagon Alley to allow them to work." said Harry; "Now, I did some research on the last Voldemort insurrection, how did Dumbledore's group fight?"

"We captured the Death Eaters." said Ron slowly.

"Ron, they used bloody stunning and binding spells on the Death Eaters, spells easily reversed. Only Moody used lethal spells, he would break bones, remove limbs or outright kill his opponents, and he survived. He was one of the two percent of the Aurors who survived." Harry said irritably; "While Voldemort's merry band raped and killed with impunity."

Ron looked sick.

"But if the adults won't use lethal magic, what hope do we have?" he said tiredly; "And they can't use dark magic."

"I've researched 'dark magic' with the Ministry. They place any magic in that category which is powerful, works with non-magical objects or was invented by muggleborns. But could you use a first-year levitation charm to bash someone's head in with a stone?" Harry sighed; "Hermione, how hard would it to get untraceable wands?"

"Illegal, immoral but not difficult, there's a wand crafter in Knockturn Alley." she replied; "What? There's a good bookshop selling tomes on old and esoteric magic. I have a tab with them and I get a copy of every book they have come in, only a quarter of which I can understand, and I've only touched half of that quarter. They're in a hidden compartment in my trunk."

"Excellent... that would be a start. But what range can a spell hit accurately?" continued Harry.

"I think Dumbledore can hit a man at fifty paces." said Ron.

"During my summers, I helped out the armourer for the local Air Cadets in my area. A small-calibre bolt-action rifle can hit a man with a good enough marksman at a hundred yards." Harry commented.

"I don't want to rain on your parade, but I thought dad said those were rather difficult to get." Ron asked.

"Hermione, does the Prime Minister know of the magical world?" enquired Harry.

"Yes..." said Hermione slowly.

"Do you think he'd like terrorists running around his country with impunity." he said finally.

"I highly doubt it." Hermione responded.

"What can muggles do about it?" asked Ron.

"Hermione, do you know the kind of devastation a Tornado jet can deliver, or that of a Challenger tank?" Harry commented; "I think Ron needs educating. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to do some major Slytherin style plotting."

* * *

Ron was sat in one of the many bedrooms of The Burrow, contemplating, when he was pulled out of his thoughts by the tapping of an owl at the window.

Between Harry and himself, they'd worked out the Hedwig, Harry's magnificent familiar, could traverse southern England from Exeter, near to where the Burrow was, and the Dursley house in under five hours. So every day, Hedwig would arrive with a message to Ron, full of inconsequential waffle and occasionally reading material into 'muggle toys' as he described them to his parents so they wouldn't look closely.

Today, there was no message. He smirked.

Over the last couple of weeks, with the packages, he suddenly realised that even his parents looked at muggles as one would a cute animal in a zoo, bemused fascination. Even the most light were wizarding supremacists.

The lack of message meant that today they would meet in Diagon Alley. How Harry intended to pull it off, but he'd come to realise that Harry didn't just pull off his insane number of insane stunts without a good deal of cunning.

* * *

Harry swept into Gringotts several inches taller and blond. He'd realised a few weeks before that his little stunt many years ago with accidentally regrowing his hair was one of the early traits of a Metamorphmagus, someone who could change their appearance.

Silently presenting his key to a teller, he was a bit puzzled as he was led silently into a room, and then panic as the room was filled with pike-armed goblins.

"Who are you human and why do you have the key to the Potter vaults?" snarled the teller.

Letting his appearance gradually revert, Harry replied;

"I could not get here without being mobbed, and anyway I doubt Dumbledore would want me out and about."

The goblin relaxed marginally.

"I was afraid it was another attempt by Dumbledore to remove funds illicitly from your account." he stated.

"What!?" Harry's ire rose and his eyes narrowed.

"Beyond your appearance, we'll confirm your identity with the Potter account manager." said the goblin firmly.

* * *

"Mum, can I get an ice-cream from Fortescue's please." Ron begged, releasing a wandless compulsion which Harry had taught him, being moderately adept at it since the amount of accidental wandless magic he'd been forced to perform as a child.

"Of course Ronnie darling." said Mrs Weasley.

He was just grabbing some floo powder when he realised he'd left a book he wanted to bring. Dropping the powder back into the pot, he moved back upstairs, pausing as he heard shouts from Ginny's room.

"-you can't use Amortentia on Harry! And I'm not in love with him!" screamed Ginny.

"Ginevra, you'll do what your told. Professor Dumbledore says that it'll be instrumental to You-know-who's defeat and you'll get the Potter fortune as a bonus." said his mother, sounding far angrier than he'd ever heard her.

"It would be like shagging my brother, Harry's like a brother to me and I wouldn't betray him!" Ginny hissed.

"Then I'm afraid I'll have to help you along." said Molly with mock-sadness.

"What-"

"Obliviate."

Ron, reeling from what he'd heard, slid downstairs and nearly hurled himself through the floo. Moving through the Leaky Cauldron purposefully, he rapped his wand against the bricks and walked into the alley, quickly spotting an unfamiliar blond sat next to Hermione.

"Who-" he began.

"Now that we're all here can we get onto the debrief." Harry said impatiently, having had a mixed day.

"Ha-" began Ron again.

"Shut up, there's a point in being incognito." snapped Harry before immediately apologising; "Sorry, I've had a rather mixed day, news good and bad."

"Can I start as my report is probably going to be the shortest but possibly most shocking?" asked Ron, getting nods from the other two; "My mother is intent on Ginny marrying you and getting the Potter fortune, Dumbledore's in on it, Ginny doesn't want to as she sees you as a brother and got obliviated for it."

"Well, shit." Harry cursed; "Dumbledore has made a number of attempts to enter the two vaults I own that he knows of, my trust vault and the Potter family vault. It turns out that the Potter family were amongst the most wealthy and powerful of the magical aristocracy. I also suspect more."

He held up a photograph of a young man with black hair carelessly strewn around his head and a young, regal looking woman in a long dress, her hair done up around her head.

"Is that..?" asked Hermione, shocked.

"My grandfather had this tucked into his journal. Charlus Potter and his little sis, Elizabeth Regina '53." Harry smirked; "I feel a visit to the world's most photographed pensioner."

"So, what's the plan?" asked Ron.

"Well, I'm not willing to leave your sister or Sirius caught in Dumbledore's trap. And I've always wanted a pet mutt." said Harry amusedly; "I grabbed a wand from my family vault, untraceable, and while I can't remove money from my family vault due to some stupid family bylaws, I just bypassed them by having the Galleons melted into ingots which I can remove. One Galleon is worth five pounds, but a Galleon has ten grams of gold in it. Each gram is worth about seven pounds, with the problem that gold is not worth as much at the moment. It would mean that if I sold five Galleons in solid gold, I would get thirty-five pounds, the equivalent of seven Galleons..."

"We've basically got unlimited resources." Ron twigged.

"Yup. Now, I've got these phones, Hermione, educate him later on how to use one. I'll be plotting and I'll contact you when I have plotted." Harry smirked.

"You don't have long, old man Dumbledore is moving us to the HQ of the Order of the Phoenix in the next week." said Ron.

"Even better." he mused, pulling out an unfamiliar wand; "It'll mean that all of those I want to rescue, you Ron, you Hermione, Ginny and Padfoot, will be in one place. I'll just put a tracking charm on you both."

Hissing noises left Harry's mouth and a green-tinged spell hit the two.

"Parsel magic isn't dark, it's just undetectable. Chin chin." he finished before slipping into the crowd, changing faces.

"Why do I get the idea that we've unleashed a new Marauder on the world, one more terrible than any before him?" asked Hermione.

* * *

_Jericho._

The signal to go came in the mid-morning as Mrs Weasley went out for her pre-lunch shop. Ron persuaded Sirius into his Animagus form to wrestle him, promptly stunning him, while Hermione shot a stunning spell into the back of Ginny's head at point-blank range.

They dragged the two out of the house, trusting that Harry's plotting had yielded some results. Just as they reached the pavement, a black BMW E34 M5 Touring pulled up at the kerb with a loud screech.

"Get in!" yelled the driver. Harry.

While Hermione looked like she wanted to start asking questions, she shoved Ginny in the back and slid in herself, while Ron put Sirius in the boot and jumped into the passenger seat, the car racing away before he'd even fully closed the door.


	9. Hadrian Octaneus McPOWERRR Potter

**August 1995**

Harry smiled genially, shaking the hand of the man opposite him, accepting the wads of cash. He'd been planning this for a few months. Having gone to a car-boot sale, he'd bought a thousand pounds of broken antiques for not even a tenth of their value, and five-hundred pounds bought him the hire of a van and driver to get it to the garage he'd hired. Dumbledore shouldn't have left his wand lying around where it could be stolen. Repairing the antiques, he'd sold them at auction and made an even twelve-thousand pounds.

He'd done this for week after week, and eventually bought a Ferrari F355 some moron had wrapped around a tree. Leaving it in his garage for several weeks, he'd bought a second and repaired them both as the electrics weren't damaged, only the bodies. That had netted him two-hundred thousand pounds when he sold them both for thirty-thousand _under_ new price with a profit of one-hundred thousand.

As he reached the end of July, Harry was admiring a bank balance of over three million as he had sold over a dozen exotic cars and even an aeroplane someone had bent. In HSBC of course, he loved the goblins and their stereotypically evil bankers image, but it was inconvenient to get Galleons turned to pounds and vice-versa.

Of course during a couple of visits, he'd removed some of the ten-gram Galleons, reassured by the goblins that they were pure gold... and melted them down. Each Galleon could be converted into five pounds or sold for its gold content at eighty-pounds a coin.

Therefore, each coin would be sold for pounds which would be converted back into sixteen Galleons, worth about thirteen-hundred pounds. He was very careful to not cause a crash on the gold market, so he'd had ten pounds converted into two Galleons for each of the coins he'd withdrawn, deposited one in his vault, turned one into bullion and kept the rest of the cash, meaning he was keeping seventy pounds for each Galleon.

The latest deal he'd made was for a full cosmetic restoration of a rare '60s Ferrari needed urgently for a show in one week. He agreed that if it wasn't up to expectations or in time, he'd cut the cost by seventy-five percent. Moving from a small hired council garage, he was operating out of an elegant 1930s car dealership he'd bought, derelict, and resurrected.

Perched on the roof was a Supermarine Swift he'd bought, also derelict, from an Army Surplus shop. It had taken a few weeks parked in his workshop, working through many sleepless nights, but the rust was gone, the internals were restored and sealed from the elements and he'd given it cosmetic restoration, also protecting it from the elements. Now people would come, comment on the aircraft and often he'd have their cars come in during the morning and out in the evening. It was lucky he'd stolen Hermione's Timeturner when she'd turned it in.

* * *

Waving goodbye to the stately gentleman and walking over to admire the Ferrari, he had a moment's thought drift into his mind, causing him to grin. Climbing in and starting it the classic, he gently drove it around his car-park before easing it into the workshop.

Inside were two BMW M cars which simply needed a 'flick of the wand' repair, an Audi Quattro rally-car which needed a slightly more delicate restoration including the electrics, which he could do, a badly-scraped Lamborghini Urraco and a boxy Maserati needing a complete cleaning of oil from the engine.

He'd become quite popular with the supercar owners because he didn't lie. He would answer a question with _exactly_ what he thought, and he never tried getting them into things they didn't want. The cars he sold and restored were _always _in perfect condition, not even a stone-chip present.

"Dobby, Winky!" he called out in the open space.

Dobby appeared with a loud crack, followed by a rather subdued pop as a distinctly careworn Winky appeared, her scorched and stained dress nearly falling apart.

"Great Master Harry Potter Sir is calling!" cheered Dobby.

"Please Dobby, if you have to address me so, just let it go at Master Harry." Harry sighed; "Anyway, I thought you worked for Dumbledore, why do you call me Master."

Dobby frowned and lowered his head, looking a bit subdued.

"House elves isn't living without bond to a master, the magic stops coming. So Dobby is bonding himself to you. Dobby is still free because Master Harry doesn't force him to work for him."

"So Winky is dying of magic-loss?" Harry asked, shutting his eyes for a moment as Winky burst into tears.

"And she is drinking butter beer to deal with it and it isn't working." Dobby nodded.

"Bloody hell, why didn't you tell me?" sighed Harry; "Damn, I could do with a couple of elves, if Winky bonds with me, would you both be willing to work here?"

After much crying, wailing about the greatness of Harry Potter Sir, he had two assistants. And to think it had only taken a hundred-pound bribe for the Dursleys to ignore the lack of his presence, a fifty-Galleon bribe to the goblins to set him up with legal papers as Hadrian Black, eighteen and from London, as well as a driving license.

Looking up from his current toy, a Ford Transit chassis, a massively stretched Ford Capri body and a Meteor engine out of a tank, Harry blinked. He was certain that next to the man in Arab dress was his godfather, wearing bike leathers.

"What can I do for you gentlemen?" he asked, brushing off his hands on his scruffy jeans.

Sirius was silent, but looked on in amusement as the man Harry had mentally christened Sheikh Money al-Gold-Plated-Diamonds began talking in a thick accent.

"Am bringing my Rolls-Royce here because my chauffeur tells me this is where to go if repairs you are needing in quick time? I do not obstacles have with money, but I am without time." he stated; "It is being badly scraped down the doors by another car, the metal is being bent and the paint is going."

"Let me come out in a minute and have a look, depending how bad it is, I could put it to the top of my work queue and have it done by tonight." Harry replied, internally comparing his English to that spoken by the elves, though they'd improved greatly under his tutelage. "And you, Mr?"

"Black, I have a motorbike that's not been used for about a decade which I'd like you to have a look at, it's not urgent." replied an extremely amused-looking Sirius.

Harry nodded and followed Sheikh Money al-Gold-Plated-Diamonds from the showroom into the carpark where a Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn was sat, with a massive scratch down the right side, the mirror still in place but bent forwards, the doors slightly bent.

"If you can be fixing this by tomorrow, I am paying you ten-thousand, if tonight, then I you are makings twenty-thousand." said the Sheikh, passing him the keys; "Many say you are good, if young, please look after her. I am trusting you, I am not trusting many young people."

"She'll come back to you gleaming." Harry promised, he never cut corners on his work.

"Two thousand advance, I pay you more when it is ready." said the Sheikh, passing Harry a bundle of fifty-pound notes and a scrap of paper with a number scrawled on it; "And here is my cell phone number, call when my car is ready."

He then stepped into a nondescript Mercedes and drove away, leaving Harry with the Rolls-Royce which he quickly moved into the workshop before walking through to the showroom where Sirius was sat, grinning.

"I didn't expect you running this place pup." he laughed.

"Thing is Sirius, are you going to tell the Order of the Deep-Fried Chicken?" Harry asked seriously.

"And wreck your little set-up, hell nah." replied Sirius; "In fact, can I help?"

"Let's see, no. I don't want one of my customer's cars ending up wrapped around a tree, or the electronics fried by an over-application of magic." Harry responded.

"Can I at least stand around and look cool?" Sirius begged.

"You need some smart clothes." Harry replied; "I only wear scruffy clothes because I spend most of my time in the workshop and get covered in grease and oil."

"How did you come to be running this anyway?" asked Sirius.

"Well, I started out with an untraceable wand repairing antique furniture, did that for about two weeks before I did my first car, and then I just kept going, even did a couple of planes, one of which is on the roof of this place. I bought this, derelict, for very little, though that nearly drained my resources. A few bits of equipment I got second-hand, but then people started talking about me, now I do have a minimum of one car come in a day." Harry replied.

"Are these customer's cars or yours?" asked Sirius, gesturing around them.

Harry glanced around, the Meteor-engined Ford, a '75 Ferrari 308 GTB, an '86 Aston Martin V8 Vantage and a Dodge Viper were all parked in the showroom.

"Yeah, apart from the Ford which is a project of mine, I bought all of these crashed and spent ages repairing all the damage from the body, the chassis, the mechanical parts to the electrics which is horribly intricate." said Harry, leaning against the front of the Ford, relaxing with soft '30s Jazz playing around the room.

"Anyway, you're looking great." Sirius commented, glancing over his godson who had shot up several inches and put on some proper muscle tone visible through his t-shirt and jeans. There were also no glasses

"Aren't I just." Harry chuckled; "I hired a couple of elves and one forces me to eat a meal five times a day and to go running, and I admit to feeling awesome. I got a wizard who specialises in eye correction to fix my eyes. And I also had the bit of skin with my scar taken off and replaced with another bit of skin grafted on. I had to do some hasty Obliviation because it leaked some kind of magic. But since then I've been able to think a lot more clearly and I've had no pains from the scar."

"Damn that's brilliant." said Sirius.

"Anyway, I need to get going on Sheikh Money al-Diamond-Plated-Gold's Rolls, you want to watch?" Harry asked, straightening up.

"Hell yes."

* * *

Harry spent the next hour dismantling the doors of the Rolls, carefully repairing the scratches and the bend in the metal caused by whatever had impacted it. It was quite intricate as he avoided applying too much magic to the electrics. He'd worked out from Diagon Alley's presence and the fact it wasn't killing all the electricity in the area that Hogwarts was an exception, rather than the rule.

A small amount of experimentation had shown him that large concentrations of magic fried electrics. That had been one phone in the bin.

Evening was approaching when Harry had set the mirror back and had also had several owners pick up their cars, and he rang the Sheikh. An hour later, the Rolls was driven away by a chauffeur, and Harry had another eighteen-thousand in his bank, as well the earlier deposit of two-thousand.

"Well, I'm going to get some dinner." Harry sighed, yawning slightly before noticing the sad look on Sirius's face; "What's wrong Sirius?"

"I'm still a wanted criminal. I wish I could be a proper godfather to you, but I'm still wanted dead by the Ministry." he said sadly, looking haggard.

"Damn, forgot about that little niggle." Harry commented before gesturing to a Citroen DS in the corner of the room; "That car belongs to the French Ambassador, and his son attends Beauxbatons."

Flipping open his contact book, he dialled one of the numbers on his phone.

"Yeah, Jean, this is Black, your car is ready for pick-up... Good, good... Do you, perchance know of a place in France called Beauxbatons? No I have nothing against wizards... no I'm not trying to blackmail you. However, my godfather is currently on the run, the British Ministry want him dead, but they never charged him with the conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to attempted murder, murder, mass murder and terrorism. I have it on good advice that if he were to, let's say, be given the trial he never got, it would be like slapping the Minister and the upstart English in the face with a plate of crepes... I could arrange for him to be here with your car tomorrow morning if I have your promise he will actually have a trial and not just be murdered as the English want. Excellent, very good, I'll see you tomorrow."

Sirius looked shocked.

"Right, you've got a promise of at least an audience with the ambassador and almost certainly a trial, while Cornelius Fudge is about to loose some of the voter's confidence." Harry stated, flipping shut his phone; "For now, you can borrow my bedroom, and you are going to eat as much as my elves tell you to because when I last saw you, you were still a skeleton and you'll have trouble picking up the girls looking like that."

He was still so run-over that he let Harry push him upstairs to the Spartan but comfortable living quarters.

* * *

Harry laughed, loudly a couple of evenings later. A photo of Sirius Black exiting a courtroom in Paris with his arms wrapped around his two defence lawyers, attractive blondes, and the UK Government blaming everything on Ma Thatcher. He'd never liked the Iron Lady, but it was very amusing that she was getting blame in the non-magical world, while in the magical world, mobs were out looking to lynch Fudge.

The survivor's guilt plea on his supposed admission of guilt and several 'classified' testimonies, relating to magic, had cleared up any chance of him being found guilty, but the Fudge administration was still failing to make any comment. He grinned, threw aside his newspaper and went back to working on a complete restoration of a Mark II Jaguar he'd picked up for a pittance. It was strewn across the workshop in thousands of bits.

The engine was dismantled on a table in one corner, the body-panels stripped to the bare metal were leaning against the wall, the interior was all-but destroyed, the monocoque chassis sat with the axles removed, the axles themselves separate from the wheels and brakes which were lying on the floor.

Having used a few charms on the chassis, healing spells he'd modified, he regrew the metal in certain places before strengthening it. By the end of the night, he had a rolling chassis.

"And I'm back!" declared Sirius, striding into the workshop nearly a week later, looking dashing with the paleness gone from his skin, his beard trimmed, his hair carefully styled and an elegant suit on.

"You are." Harry replied calmly from by the Jaguar, which was sat on trestles as he carefully levitated the engine into the car and, after releasing the spells, connected up the drive-train.

"By the way, are you going back to Hogwarts?" Sirius asked, watching, fascinated, as Harry's fingers danced across the mechanics of the machine.

"I dunno, I mean I started this as a Summer thing, a bit of rebellion, a bit of money, but I've got a customer base, I love messing around with cars... you remember Sheikh Money, he offered me a million upfront for the Meteor Ford as soon as I've finished it, and what is the magical world? A bunch of sheep happily being manipulated by two old men, one with a daddy problem and one with a god complex." Harry replied; "Anyway, do you know if the Order of the Sautéed Turkey are running around like headless chickens looking for me?"

"Nah, Dumbledore declared that nobody was to contact you until he said otherwise. I was going to wait until the next meeting before ripping into him and threatening to ban him from my house to force him to bring you, but I never got round to it." Sirius answered.

"Good. Anyway, how much of our time at Hogwarts is wasted. I chose badly and took Divination, which is crap. Potions is taught by a man with a daddy issue, specifically _my _dad. Defence is crap unless taught by a so-called 'dark creature' or an insane Death Eater, maybe they could get Voldemort himself in? Astronomy is taught using equipment a century out of date, history is nothing but Goblin Rebellions, you get the picture." Harry shrugged; "Anyway, Winky has nearly finished sewing all of the interior for this car, and I've got a guy doing the wood, she'll be a runner in a week. So, back to Hogwarts, do I want to go to somewhere that has tried to kill me a minimum of twice a year? I love Hogwarts, but I dislike what's done there."

"Oh yeah, I changed the Black Family motto to 'Matrem Tuam Pedicavi." Sirius added as an after-note.

Harry tripped over the air in front of him and sprawled on the garage floor.

* * *

Several of the locals gathered as the eccentric father-son pair running the supercar dealership across the road parked a caravan outside their building and spray-painted it with a circular target. Then there was the whining sound of a jet engine starting up, and then a powerful ex-military truck towed out a Lightning jet fighter minus its wings.

The person in the cockpit leaned out, with his thumbs up. The bottom engine shot a jet of blue flame out and the truck could be heard pushing back against the jet as the caravan was roasted.


	10. The Maestro d'Avila

**2006**

With a final calico-tearing bellow, the engine of the sports-car fell silent. Climbing out of it was an handsome-looking young man, jet-black hair laid in a slightly messy but elegant way, tanned skin, emerald-green eyes and a sharp suit. The car next to him was a replica of a Jaguar XJ13, running a twin-supercharged seven-litre V12 from Lister. He'd seen the original car and fallen in love with it, commissioning a replica with modern brakes, gearbox and engine.

The driver stepped out. Harry Potter, the so-called 'Boy-Who-Lived. Otherwise known as Caspar Garcia d'Avila, so-called Grandee of Avila. Abandoned around Christmas in 1991 by his uncle in the Spanish fortress town of Avila, he'd been found by a local blacksmith and raised as his own child. As Rodrigo had been in his seventies, he'd had several other local tradesmen help raise Caspar.

So when the blacksmith had passed on of old age, leaving ten-year old Caspar behind, the near-genius child had kept the legacy of his 'Abuelo' alive. From the day he could read, he'd taken on knowledge voraciously, learning French, Italian and English, maths through business as well as business itself, and most importantly to him, how to forge and use swords. The way he'd been raised meant that when he grew old enough, Caspar effectively became the leader of the town. He worked with the tradesmen, met with tourists, frequently spoke with the clerics, taught the children to fence

All the while, he worked long hours in the forge, producing the most beautiful and practical swords in the country, selling for between thousands and tens of thousands. Granted a doctorate of metallurgy by the University of Madrid, Caspar had come to the attention of the Royal Family, a representative of whom had visited the forge. After an hour of discussion, demonstration and negotiation, he began supplying Juan Carlos and the Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon with swords, both ceremonial, decorative and practical.

He had been thirteen at the time. Over the next three years, he'd sold swords, daggers and other such weapons to most European Royal Families, several Middle Eastern ones, a number of films, film stars and nobility. Five local children every year apprenticed under him, learning both to make and use the blades, known in the city as 'Los Pequeños Caballeros', and while he and an assistant still made the greatest of their swords in Avila, he owned forges in Toledo and Salamanca where other employees made more mass-market weapons.

But nobody knew his greatest secret except for an elderly man from Damascus who made and sold Persian Rugs. Nouri al-Rashid was known affectionately by many as 'El Emir'. In fact, he was a skilled sorcerer who had taught all he knew to Caspar. A tiny amount of it was magic. He taught wisdom, calmness, but also, though slow to anger, al-Rashid fought with ferocious skill and lethality. Magical bandits were sometimes an issue in the wilds of Spain, and they'd both had to kill. Caspar had learnt to be the last to draw a sword but the first, and last, to strike, being the last to enter a fight, but always ending it.

Caspar's 'in' with the Royal Family had allowed him to quietly have emancipation papers filed, granting him the rights of an adult from his fifteenth birthday. Including a driving license which he immediately took advantage of. Nobody questioned it as, outside of Avila, few knew him, and ten years of working in the forge, ever since he was five, had given him a build that few sixteen-year-old teenagers could achieve.

Walking onto the forward deck of the ship, he sighed pensively as the arms of his passenger wrapped around his chest from behind, her chin resting up on his shoulder.

Monique, his best friend, his partner, his lover, everything to him. Caspar turned to face her, leaning into her touch. She had been his friend since during the time he'd been mourning for his 'Abuelo', finding her, homeless, on the streets of the city. Without any reserve, he'd moved her into one of the spare rooms over the forge, and from that day onward, they'd trusted unreservedly in each-other, taught each-other and learnt from each-other.

Though Monique was nearly a year older than he was, there was a part of her that always looked to him as the 'leader', even when she'd first started getting hormones and looking at him in a slightly different light and it took a year-and-a-half for him to catch up. Around six months after Caspar had taken her into his home, she'd confessed that she had been thrown out of her home for having magic. After a brief period of her sitting on him to stop him hunting down her progenitors, he calmed down and admitted his own possession of those abilities and shared them. That had been the beginning of their partnership, sharing everything, their darkest secrets to simple things like chores.

In the magical world, where duelling was still the norm, Caspar had watched, amused, as Monique fought off a number of duellists who decided that he wasn't 'man enough' for her. The one he'd fought after a particularly foul insult directed at both of them had ended up with fifteen stab-wounds to painful but non-fatal places and concussion from being dealt a heavy blow from the sword-guard of his rapier. Unfortunately, there were more duels over her than either would have liked, Monique being a beautiful young Hispanic woman with dusky skin, grey eyes and dark, near-black hair descending, when not tied up, to the middle of her back.

"This is the first time you are returning to England, yes?" she asked in slightly broken English, and upon catching his raised eyebrow continued; "We are going to the land, we should speak the language."

"Yes, I've never been back." Caspar admitted, his voice a husky baritone; "Cowardly it may be, but I've never been able to face my demons."

Monique simply rested her head on his shoulder. She knew that as a master of the mental arts, that he had almost perfect recall, especially of particularly memorable events, be they memorable for positive or negative reasons. It also meant that negative memories haunted him far longer than they would for most.

"If there is one thing you are not and never have been, it's a coward, _amado_." she whispered, her soft lilting tones emphasising her conviction.

A few days later, the XJ13 bellowed off the car-deck of the ferry onto the pier at Southampton. Built in England around a six-hundred horsepower twelve-cylinder engine, it was fast, getting them to London in, despite city traffic, a bit less than two hours, chewing up the miles with ease.

The whole way, Caspar was ill at ease, having never before returned to England. It wasn't that it wasn't a beautiful country, or that the people were terrible... much, but he still remembered some of the most terrible occurrences in his life happening on these shores.


	11. Escape to the Continent

**Early January 2006**

A smirking Harry Potter strode out of a door usually not visible on the seventh floor of Hogwarts Castle. It was eight-AM, just in time for breakfast. At the end of his second year, it had been part of an interrogation of Dobby that he had found out about the ingenious 'Come and Go Room'. Naturally, he decided to exploit it. And the fact that the Sorting Hat had given him Gryffindor's sword had encouraged him to learn as much about swordplay as possible.

So nearly every day since, two-and-a-half years, he had gone in at five-thirty for an two-and-a-half hours in the morning and another two hours in the evening practising magic and swordplay. Unfortunately, he'd refrained from pulling the sword from an expanded pocket and sticking Peter Pettigrew with it. Next time he wouldn't make that mistake.

However, for the last few weeks, that hadn't been his project. Shifting his glasses from his face, Harry rubbed his eyes slightly, glad he'd found a potion to correct his eyesight. Around the rims of the spectacles were carved hundreds of runes. After seeing a head-up display in a video about a fighter aircraft while at the Dursleys, he'd decided to create something similar. This one however had the magical equivalent of a hard-drive packed into a rune containing a database of every ward, rune and charm recorded in the Hogwarts Library and from any of the bookshops in Britain that he'd bought from, including a number in Knockturn Alley.

As he walked around, pale green lines came up and a mental command quickly evaluated one of them. A stone-reinforcing charm, something fairly expected. Hogwarts was saturated in magic. It was before dawn and with Umbridge's little squad of toadies running around, he couldn't think of a better venue to test out a few things he'd wanted to do.

Harry was lounging outside of one of the passageways out of the castle that he was certain the toad's toadies used for smuggling, and as he had been doing for around two weeks, layered dozens of spells over it. He was just about to finish with a curse-trigger when he heard shuffling coming down the corridor. Two sets of feet. Something dragging.

Flitting into an alcove, he drew his wand in a lightning-fast movement as his other hand fell to the knife he always kept tucked into the back of his waistband.

"Potter." spat one of the two female Slytherins who had spotted his movement.

Deciding that the game was up, Harry detached himself from the shadows and stepped forward, his wand lowered but still drawn in a show of caution.

"Miss Greengrass, Miss Davis." he greeted them politely with his politician's fake smile, knowing that both would see through it in a heartbeat; "I must admit not expecting to see either of you out here... carrying your trunks around like muggles."

"And we didn't expect to see Gryffindor's Golden Boy around at this hour." said the ice-cold beauty, Daphne Greengrass.

"Just trying to see how long it'll take me to drive the Albino Ferret to a nervous breakdown." Harry shrugged, layering a couple of additional curses onto the tunnel after a moment of thought.

Both raising eyebrows as wisps of magic in various colours issued from his wand, adding to a white spider-web of magic which appeared around the exit, Tracy Davis commented with a small smirk;

"Two days should do it. He came in a couple of hours ago with a Hand of Glory stuck up his backside and through the seam of his trousers."

Harry smirked slightly;

"So pray tell where and why you're running away?" he asked.

"And have you turn us over to Dumbledore?" hissed Greengrass.

"Not on my life. Dumbledore holds about as much of my trust as Lucius Malfoy speaks the truth." Harry replied.

"It's getting heated in the viper pit. Daphne and I are neutrals, greys in the political battles of light and dark. Of course being female there are those that want us..." said Davis.

"And your sister Miss Greengrass?"

"She's a bit of a sycophant, not an extremist purist, but wants to marry into a nice pureblood family, have a handful of pureblood children and look good on someone's arm." Greengrass sneered; "We just want out."

"So, where are you going, how are you getting there?" he continued asking, noting their slightly embarrassed glances at each-other; "Ah, you have no plan at all. How long could you survive in the snake's den?"

"A week." replied Davis; "After that we'd either have to submit to the dark factions or being forcibly used by them. Our families aren't exactly supporting. Halfblood bastard daughter of a noble house and the wildcard heiress of a grey family leaning towards the purist factions."

"Give me three days, maybe two and I could have you out of here and untraceable." said Harry, his hand twitching towards his knife at the mention of rape.

"What's in it for you?" demanded Greengrass.

"What makes you think I'm in it for something, after all I'm Dumbledore's heroic Gryffindor Golden Boy?" he replied, sneering at the title.

"Pull the other one, you're about as much of a Golden Boy as Draco Malfoy is an advocate of racial tolerance." she sniffed.

"Yeah." Harry chuckled, conjuring himself a chair; "Well, this is a bit of a story." he sighed for a moment, conjuring two more chairs and using a wind charm to push the two girls into them; "I must admit I've never really told anyone about this, but we all know Albus 'I am your favourite grandfather' Dumbledore is fond of manipulating people. Nicholas Flamel apparently gave Dumbledore his stone to protect. Six-hundred years and I'm certain he's never had it stolen before, yet Dumbledore gets it. He then hides it behind a Cerberus, some Devil's Snare, a room full of flying keys, a giant chess set, a troll, some fires with a flame-freezing potion and a class ten cursed object."

"There were rumours about this." Davis nodded.

"Yep, of course the overgrown bat, Snape, swooping around bullying everyone and the fact that Hermione saw him jinxing my broom when he was in fact using a counter-curse led us to believe he was after the stone. We got past the Cerberus by playing it to sleep, we set the Devil's Snare on fire. Then came the keys, and in that room were several brooms. Got past that, Ron played through the chess set, the troll was already knocked out and the potion was one of a number, some of which were harmless, some of which were poison. A logic puzzle told us which one it was. Notice a pattern, if we'd brought Neville along, he'd have specialised in the Herbology test, then flying, Ron and I are good at. Chess is Ron's speciality, the troll we could have knocked out after we dealt with the one on Halloween. Then the logic puzzle suited Hermione and he'd enchanted the cursed mirror to only give the stone to someone who didn't want to use it." Harry continued; "See the pattern, wanting a nice pure-of-heart champion of the light."

"Hang-on, Dumbledore said that he had driven the troll back." frowned Davis.

"When Dumbledore says anything, be prepared for it to be him manipulating you." Harry rolled his eyes; "Anyway, when did he say that, I don't remember."

"None of Gryffindor were there, apparently you were in your tower." replied Greengrass.

"Typical. No, I being an utter moron at the time jumped on its back and stuck my wand up its nose before casting the strongest flame spell I knew at the same moment as Ron levitated its own club on its head." he shook his head; "Anyway, second year, Chamber of Secrets crisis. Dumbledore was around for the last opening, he knew it was Moaning Myrtle who died, so why didn't he interrogate her for what happened to her. When a couple of second years could work out that it was a basilisk running around and manage to find it and kill it, that's saying something about the adults around here."

"Dumbledore claimed he'd dealt with the basilisk and that was why he'd left the school!" Davis exclaimed.

"Let me guess, while I was in the hospital wing?" Harry asked rhetorically; "Then he makes no effort to get my innocent godfather a trial and lets a man impersonating his old friend Alastor Moody into the school to enter me into a contest that have killed far more skilled wizards. You get the picture. Then this year.

After a few moments of silence, Greengrass stated astutely;

"You want out as well."

"I hadn't exactly planned it, but when you decided to do this, I rather thought why hadn't I left already." Harry replied; "Anyway, go back to your dorms, I'll contact you. Pack only necessities. Your wand, a few changes of clothes, sentimental items like jewellery, leave books and assorted rubbish here. If possible pack it into one trunk, it'll be easier to get out that way."

"Why should we trust you?" asked Greengrass with not quite as much heat.

"Let's see, you were heading down a well-known passage with no plan of escape except to leave. I think less of why you should trust me but how getting out with me benefits you." he answered coldly; "You have no reason to trust me, but I don't care, as I see it, you have a few options, escape with me, escape alone and fail, escape to your families who will turn you over to the dark factions, stay here and submit to the dark factions or stay here, don't submit and end up getting raped. If you come with me, I can arrange an escape that won't get you caught and I'll fight off anyone who pursues us."

"We have nothing to loose Daphne, and a lot to gain." sighed Davis.

Greengrass nodded slightly and offered him her hand. After shaking hands with both, he turned back to the tunnel.

"Now, what do you think Greengrass, Davis, terror ward? Nightmare curse? Or one I invented myself, the drop-kick to the bollocks curse." he asked with a hint of humour.

"Layer them one after another." Davis giggled; "And you might as well call me Tracy, and if Her Majesty the Queen of Ice allows us mere mortals, she's Daphne."

"Tracy!" hissed Greengrass.

Harry chuckled and watched them leave. Neither was of great height, though Davis was a touch shorter with long brown hair sweeping down to her back and with quite prominent 'assets', Greengrass had long golden-blonde hair caught in a neat ponytail which was quite long, her hair framing delicate facial features and ice-blue eyes. She wasn't quite as physically matured as her friend, but they were both very attractive. So what, he was a sucker for pretty girls.

* * *

For the next two days, he plotted. Harry had to admit he was good at it, and it was rather fun. The third day was a Hogsmeade weekend, which suited his plans for none of them to be missed for a full day. At dinner on the second day, he silently conjured a snake and hissed brief instructions to it. The conjuration wouldn't last long, but it would do the necessary job. It was the signal to the two young women to escape.

Slipping out, he began finish his last layering of the school with noisy and distracting pranks. Harry had already counted over fifteen-hundred of them hidden everywhere. It would probably take at least an extra day for them to clear up his messes and start hunting them down. With around seven months until he was sixteen, he had to stay free for that and a year for freedom in the wizarding world.

Stood by the statue of a one-eyed witch, Daphne Greengrass whispered to her long-time friend;

"You don't think Potter has double crossed us?"

"Nope." stated a cheerful voice as said Potter emerged from a passageway which had apparently was behind the statue; "Down here and fast, if we get caught this early, the whole escape is off. If we get halfway down this tunnel, nobody can catch us."

They quickly dived down as he began layering curses on the entrance.

"Get going, I'll catch up once I've sealed this." he ordered, finishing warding the exit. Hitting the floor, ceiling and walls of the tunnel with his wand, he watched approvingly as a rune appeared in the stone of each. Grabbing the Fairbairn-Sykes knife out of the back of his trousers, Harry, cut his palm, allowing blood to drip onto the rune on the floor. It was a short-term blood-based ward which simply wouldn't let anyone through until it was overpowered or ceased working in about two weeks.

And since blood, particularly his with phoenix tears and basilisk venom was one of the most powerful magical substances on earth, it was unlikely anything could overpower it. Racing down the passageway, Harry caught up with the two young women and a minute later, he felt the tingle of the wards of Hogwarts.

"We're out." he stated, fishing out a wallet from his pocket; "Touch this."

Hesitantly they both laid a hand on the leather as he hissed something under his breath. A green glow and they were spinning through the air for all of five seconds. When they ceased spinning, the three found themselves in a comfortable-looking sitting room with a mixture of odd ends of antique furniture and non-magical technology.

"Welcome to my London home. We'll lay up here for the night and probably get out of the country tomorrow. Don't do any magic around here, this flat is completely magic-free so the Ministry won't track it. The neighbours know that an eccentric millionaire lives here so won't bother us and there is no paperwork connecting me to this place." Harry stated; "What we used to travel was the Parsel equivalent of a Portkey, but I'm not using it more than once because they might be able to create a way to trace it if I were to use it too often."

Too full of adrenaline to do anything but nod, the two women were quickly directed to bedrooms as Harry retired to his study and the laptop he had just a few hours to finish magic-proofing.

* * *

Daphne wandered down the hallway after a quick shower, exquisite smells that exceeded those of Hogwarts emanating from the kitchen. Slipping in, she glanced around before commenting to Harry's back.

"Not exactly what I expected for a bachelor pad."

"It does the job and I have a taste for antiques." Harry replied, checking the cooker. "Full Monty alright with you?"

"That being?" she asked.

"Sausages, bacon, white pudding, black pudding, kippers, fried egg, tomatoes, mushrooms, bubble and squeak, hash browns, toast, and potato cakes." he replied, already piling it onto a plate which he placed in front of her moments later.

"How the hell do you eat this much and stay a scrawny git?!" said Daphne incredulously.

"I usually only eat this during the summer months, and I usually work it off." Harry smirked; "And you've never seen me out of robes."

He let his dressing gown come off, hanging it on a peg. Underneath, he was wearing flexible joggers, a t-shirt and a belt holding a katana and wakizashi.

"Unlike you lazy-bones, I've been up since four-thirty this morning working out." he continued with the same smirk; "I've spent over five hours a day for the last three years learning how to fight with various swords and magic. You see that's why every time darling Draco comes to hex me, he ends up either highly humiliated or with no memory of the event. Basically, magical power is useless if you're not fit. You can't dodge and gradually your power diminishes if you become unfit. Whenever I see Malfoy gorging on sweets from mummy, I laugh at him."

"I see." stated Daphne, her eyes raking across his form with no little interest.

"Morning Tracy." Harry said as she came in, already filling a plate for you.

"Is that all true?" she asked.

"Yep, completely. Pureblood families are diminishing in power because they're completely unfit and, more often than not, totally inbred. Luckily for me, my mother was mundane-born, my paternal grandmother was a Black. Charlus Potter's own mother was a first-generation witch. The Potter family often marry halfbloods, muggleborns or purebloods they haven't married into for centuries." Harry replied, retrieving his mug of coffee and sitting down at the table as Tracy tucked into her meal.

"We've always been taught how muggles, however much we must tolerate them, are insignificant." said Daphne with a bit of confusion, used to the purist mantra; "I'm technically a low-level pureblood with Nordic heritage and Tracy is a halfblood."

"Name the fastest broom in the world." Harry ordered.

"Firebolt, top speed of a hundred-and-fifty which you should know since you have one." said Tracy.

"Okay, completely without magic, non-magicals, as I prefer as it's less insulting, have gone faster than the speed of sound which is seven-hundred and sixty miles an hour if I remember correctly." Harry pointed out; "Where we have brooms which can carry a couple of people, non-magicals have machines that can carry hundreds of people, or go twice the speed of sound. Magicals such as most British wizards, however, are backward, stupid, stuck in the nineteenth century. Magic has made them complacent, so sure of their superiority, they don't even realise that how utterly imbecilic they are. Obliviating someone won't help if a camera records you do it. Rarely do these cameras use film, usually the image is recorded hundreds of miles away. The Statute is paper-thin and they're too stupid to realise."

The two young women looked sickly at the realisation.

"What're our plans?" asked Tracy, looking to change the subject.

"Ask Harry, he's in charge of tactical thinking." Daphne said wryly, pointing her fork at him.

"I could go to one of the estates and whack a Fidelius charm down on it, but personally that doesn't appeal to me. As I mentioned yesterday, getting out of the country does. Considered a world tour?" he shrugged, taking a sip from his coffee.

"The Ministry tracks all International Portkeys in and out of the country." said Tracy.

"I hate Portkeys and I wasn't suggesting using them anyway." replied Harry; "Anyway, I reckon we've got today and maybe tomorrow to do what we want before people start searching, so I suggest we do some shopping today, get clothes that fit in."

"Ignoring the fact that you haven't addressed transport, supposing we get out of the country, where do we go?" asked Daphne.

"Anywhere in the world really. I'd recommend southern Europe, there are some pretty nice beaches in that direction. Spain's good although I'd hold off on France, because once the Ministry become convinced we have left the country, France is where they'll first look, especially since they know of my friendship with the elder Delacour daughter." he commented thoughtfully; "I don't have any links to the Spanish, which is both good and bad."

"How so?" Tracy said curiously.

"Knowing people in law enforcement, intelligence and the various militaries around the world is very useful." Harry smirked; "I know you've probably found out that I spend my summers with non-magical relatives. That's rubbish, ever since my first year, an elf has been there under polyjuice allowing me to run around doing whatever I want."

"Why weren't you a Slytherin." said Daphne despairingly; "If the Lions have the best Snake, I don't know what's coming to the world."

"Because of the death-toll that would have occurred had I been in the viper's pit." he chuckled; "I've learnt how to manage finances since I could walk, I had to when my relatives pawned off all the housekeeping on me. Gradually I learnt the things that the best Slytherin should know. How could a manor-raised brat like Malfoy be a Slytherin? He hasn't an ounce of cunning in him."

"Point. Anyway, where're we going shopping?" Tracy asked.

"I need to pick up an order from my tailor, I guess after that I'll let you two loose in Harrods." said Harry thoughtfully.

"What's Harrods?" Daphne said with a cute frown of confusion.

"Imagine dozens of shops, non-magical ones, but about the size of Diagon Alley, packed into one building. Loads of shops selling makeup, perfume, clothes, even toys for children. It's populated mainly by the rich and famous." he replied, catching a dubious look from the two of them; "I may not play pureblood politics in the magical world doesn't mean I'm not bloody good at it outside the magical world. It's not as tame in the non-magical world as it is in the magical world you're used to. Anyway, eat up, I need to get changed."

"How are we going to pay for this?" asked Tracey worriedly.

"I'll bankroll it." replied Harry; "Amongst my many accounts, I have one in London with Coutts bank with a couple of million sitting in an account. The identity I'll be using is one that is a minor nobleman in this world."

He slipped out, returning a few minutes later in smart brogues, dark-blue slacks, blazer, a white shirt and a black tie, with his hair brushed down into less of a mess.

"That's... different." stated Daphne.

"You mean not an utter mess?" Harry countered.

* * *

Harry was beginning to regret taking the two girls shopping. His introducing them to non-magical clothing had gone well, in that they were now obsessed with it. His bank account was certainly taking a several thousand pound hit today. He was just down at the car, a 1999 Bentley Continental T Mulliner, loading the latest shopping into the massive boot when Dobby popped in, still invisible.

"Master Harry sir, they is findings out! Dobby has set off your pranks!" said the excitable elf. Harry nodded approvingly, but his glasses picked up a spell on the elf, a tracking charm.

"Thanks Dobby, go now." he ordered, striding to the lift back up to the clothes area. Quickly finding the two young women, he grabbed Daphne's arm.

"We need to get going soon, we've been found out and somebody put a tracking charm on Dobby, my personal elf." he whispered to her; "Finish shopping, they'll take the cost from my account, meet at the car. Tell Tracy."

It was another quarter of an hour before the Bentley pulled away from Harrods and raced across Knightsbridge and Kensington to the townhouse near the Royal Albert Hall.

"So, are we leaving Britain now?" asked Tracy.

"At least until things cool down." Harry nodded; "I've got a few contacts around the world, and in the British Commonwealth, I'm Baron Potter until I turn eighteen and become Earl of Caereryr. The House of Potter was the only one which didn't leave the non-magical world back in sixteen-ninety, we've kept our influence and built it ever-higher, the same for our money."

"How much are the Potters worth, or the Potter singular?" Daphne enquired.

"My spending account contains five million pounds, that's a million Galleons, with Coutts bank in London, something like and many more millions distributed through a number of banks, Cayman Islands, Monaco and Switzerland." Harry shrugged; "I keep the rest in gold bullion which is easy to trade and given that a Galleon carries about ten grams of gold, it's worth a hundred pounds in the non-magical world. The equivalent of twenty Galleons, which are worth two-thousand pounds, which is the equivalent of four-hundred galleons... You get the picture."

"You've been fleecing the magical world this whole time." realised Tracey, who was stuffing clothes into a suitcase.

"Of course. It's an expendable asset and Gringotts likes me because I'm generous with my tips and they take a pound out of every six I change for Galleons, they get a pound, I get a Galleon from the remaining five pounds." Harry smirked; "I'm rather good at manipulating the magical world. For instance Hagrid's Acromantula colony, I made a deal with them, one in every five spiders born go to a preserve in South America where I get all the silk, and the Hogwarts Acromantula give me all their spare silk. The Centaurs make longbows and fletch arrows which I sell into the non-magical world and they get free reign of one of my estates bordering the Forbidden Forest. Anyway, it'd be worth getting going, as soon as we're out of London, the safer I feel."

"What about your owl?" asked Daphne.

"Hedwig knows where I'm going and is going to stay around and cause as much trouble as she can." Harry continued, shrinking his own crocodile-skin suitcase which Charlus Potter's father, Andrew Potter, had shot.

"So where're we going?" Daphne continued.

"Spain, spend a few weeks there, Geneva for the fifth of March, there's a show I want to be present for." Harry replied, fishing out a briefcase from a cupboard; "Got ID for all of us. They're all real, I've put us into the records. As Sirius' heir, I don't think he minds me using Harold Black as my name and I've used it for my drivers' licence. Tracy, you're registered in the non-magical world so I've given you the name Tracy de Vere, it's an old noble name but not without enough members to raise many eyebrows, Daphne, you're not registered so I put you in under your own name. Passport allows you to travel overseas."

"You're the Black heir?"

"Uh huh. Baron Blackmore is what I should be, but because I've changed the age on my ID and all the government files to an adult age in the non-magical world, I'm Earl of Blackmore. First since the Statute of Secrecy. I'll allow Sirius to take over if I can get him cleared."

"He's innocent?"

"Yup." Harry replied; "In fact he was never even given a trial."

He melted into a shadow for a few seconds, vanishing into darkness before returning, stepping out wandlessly levitating a large grey safe.

"How did you do that?!" demanded Tracy.

"Japanese shadow magic." Harry smirked; "I nicked a Timeturner at the end of my third year and I've abused it comprehensively, I have quite a broad knowledge on foreign magic. Even ancient Druidic magic, Egyptian curses, Byzantine battle magic, some alchemy and a few other things. Most of it is either forgotten or considered dark by the British Wizarding World."

He directed his fingers at the grey-coloured safe and slowly closed them together, shrinking it until he could simply throw it into a pocket.

"Wow!" the two young women said simultaneously.

"You simply need a bit of logic. For instance, every so often, I sell a lot of gold onto the non-magical market at a high price, making the over-all value crash. When it reaches rock-bottom, I buy a mass for far less. I end up probably with around the same amount of money but loads more gold, causing the price to climb massively. When it reaches peak, I sell a bit more gold onto the market, the price crashes, I buy lots cheap, repeat, repeat, repeat." Harry replied; "Basically, the point is, British magicals have no sense of logic, they are insular, they call anything that is too powerful or esoteric 'dark'. Yes there is some truly dark magic but not all of what they able 'dark arts' is dark. I was intending on leaving at the end of this year anyway, I got tired of Dumbledore."

"I get it!" exclaimed Tracy; "And I've got an idea. I had a muggle – I mean non-magical – friend. She had a laboratory where she did potions-like things but with really high-quality cheap stuff, like vials you could get a hundred of for a Galleon, protective glasses and a coat which we should have in potions, especially with Snape."

"Excellent idea. And house-elves have their own powerful magic, they can make things unbreakable and transport them through wards." Harry smirked.

"A delivery service!" said Daphne.

"Just so. Tell you what, I'll float you a loan, ten-thousand pounds between you, and I'll help you set up business. Heck knows I've got so many bored elves." Harry chuckled; "But we need to get going. We can discuss this in the car."

They quickly loaded up the Bentley, Harry driving them out of the city and cruising onto the motorway, the barely-audible purr that it had in the city giving way to a muffled roar as the turbocharged V8 sped the car up to cruise-speed.

"How many of these things are there?" asked Tracy, who was sat in the front with him, gazing at the cars that the Bentley was rapidly cruising past.

"Probably over a million." Harry replied; "Most households have at least one. They've been building them since the very first car was made in Germany over a century ago. I see myself as a bit of a collector and have a number."

"How many?" asked Daphne, looking up from the laptop which he'd loaded a film on for her to watch.

"More than two-dozen." he answered, opening a screen on the centre-console. A moment of fiddling brought up a series of photos; "Aston Martin DB5, Audi Quattro Rally, this Bentley, a 1930 Bentley Speed Six, BMW E46 M3 GTR, Corvette C2 and C3, Ferrari Daytona, Ford GT40, GT500 and GT, Jaguar XK150 and E-Type, Lamborghini Muira, Mercedes 300SL and a Brabus SV12S. That's just what I've got photos of."

"How fast do these go?" Tracey enquired as Harry sped up to avoid a car cutting into their lane from right next to them.

"Not all of them have the same top speed, the older, probably the slower. The heavier too. This is pretty heavy, but it can go up to about one-hundred and seventy, one hundred and eighty tops." Harry commented; "I can't go that fast here as it's illegal and because everyone else would be going so slowly I'd probably crash into them. Also, these are worth quite a lot, back when I bought it, this was about three-hundred and fifty-thousand pounds. My collection, my personal one, not including what my parents and grandparents bought, is worth several million."

"So, where're we going, how're we getting there?" said Daphne.

"Dover, we'll take a ferry to Santander in Spain, drive south to Burgos, then south-west onto Salamanca, south-east to Avila, then San Lorenzo de El Escorial, a huge palace, before the short drive to Madrid. We'll then head north-west across the Pyrenees mountains into France, Toulouse, Lyon, and the Geneva in Switzerland. Ever been skiing?" he replied.

"No." the two girls replied together.

"Trust me, it's fun. A sort-of carriage suspended from wires takes you to the top of a mountain and you get to race down on the snow. It's better shown than explained." Harry continued, manipulating the centre console computer to show someone skiing down a mountain. "That should keep us busy until mid-March."

"I can't speak French. Or Spanish!" said a slightly panicky Tracy.

"I can." Harry enquired; "How's your Occlumency?"

"We both know enough to detect an intrusion and draw attention to the person." replied Daphne; "It's expected for almost all purebloods."

"Right, I accidentally started Occlumency aged six with a local guy who taught me martial arts when I could get away from my muggle relatives. I'm pretty natural at it, to the extent I have hidden big chunks of my memories and when Dumbledore violates my mind, he sees what I want, and what I want him to see is what he wants." Harry described; "So anyway, I can pick up languages fairly easily, I'll teach you both the Mind Arts, and that'll help you learn the languages. Otherwise, a friend of mine developed a spell which, when applied daily, allows you to understand foreign languages. You still hear the words spoken in a different language and you can't speak them, but it helps you learn."

"Thanks." smiled Tracy; "But when we were taught Occlumency, it was by saying 'clear your mind' and using Legilimency on us."

For the first time, Harry looked genuinely furious.

"That's just mind-rape! Occlumency is developed through meditation – mental control and manipulation!" he hissed before dropping into a tirade of insults and curses given in Arabic and calming down nearly five minutes later; "But anyway, from Switzerland, there are a few places I want to see in Austria, such as Vienna before heading into Germany, going right across it, Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Aachen, Cologne, Munster. After that we can head into The Netherlands. I like Amsterdam but I'm not sure if you're old enough to enjoy it properly."

Tracy blushed while Daphne just looked confused.

"I mean the Red Light District is quite... energetic."

"Shut up!" a bright-red Tracy ordered.

"Someone clue me in!" demanded Daphne.

"The Dutch, particularly in parts of Amsterdam..." Tracy trailed off.

"They're quite open about their sexuality." he deadpanned before saying to their incredulous; "What, I'm not a complete sexual or social virgin."

"Well, it's just a lot of the school assumed that you were involved in some sort of three-way with Weasley and Granger. Or that there was some kind of love-rivalry there." Daphne said slowly.

"Heck no. Ron's an immature bastard with a penchant for betrayal and Hermione hates anyone doing anything better than she does." scoffed Harry; "But anyway, you saw what I wanted to see, and what you expected to see. The Gryffindor golden boy with his select friends, not outgoing but oh-so heroic. When outside of school, I'm not lacking in self-confidence. Unlike bad-faith, not unjustly so."

"Bad-faith?" asked Tracey.

"Malfoy. Bastard line of the French nobility of du Malfoi, wealthy and cunning, they will happily back-stab and cheat, but they're not ones for petty evil, but true cunning. The Malfoy line was made by a few good marriages, Narcissa Black and Lucy, his mother was a member of a noble family which were all suspiciously wiped out, leaving the entire fortune to Abraxus Malfoy, who I call Abby." Harry replied.

"And completely disrespectful to anyone he dislikes." Daphne smirked.

"Yup!" Harry said with a broad grin; "Anyway, it'll be about an hour, maybe a bit more, to Dover. I booked first-class tickets on a ferry to Santander. Nothing but the best for my ladies."

"Flattery won't help you." said Tracy.

"Hmm..." Harry replied disbelievingly.

"I know you make a lot of money trading gold, but how did your family keep its fortunes?" asked Daphne curiously.

"Well, for the last few centuries it has been shipping. They saw in the seventeenth century that there was money to be made by trading. For over two centuries, our ships have run expensive cargoes across the world." Harry replied; "We lost some ships during the First World War, so the Lord Potter, my great-great-grandfather Wulfric Potter, bought several scrapyards. When the war ended, dozens of warships were 'scrapped'. He obliviated the workers and kept the ships. When a treaty had more warships 'scrapped' for being too big, he got them. During the Second World War, you call the Grindelwald Conflict, he defended the Potter Shipping Fleet with these battleships, and bought even more ships after the war. His son Andrew, and his grandson Charlus continuing to do so. But in recent years, ships have become so large that our shipping has become obsolete."

"So hundreds of years your family has been importing things to Britain which has brought the fortunes of the Potter fortune. You know it's a much debated topic, nobody until now actually knew how the Potters became rich." said Daphne.

"Actually, we made money before then by working closely with the crown. For instance, in the late fifteenth century, their was a civil war between two families over the crown, the Tudors of Lancaster and the Plantagenets of York. The Potters sided with the Plantagenet side for as long as it took to gain as much as possible from them before betraying them for the Tudors." Harry continued; "Where there was money and influence to be made, through history, we were there. When the Normans of France invaded Saxon England in 1066, they joined the Norman side shortly after the Saxons paid us a massive amount to side with them. The Normans won and we were rewarded handsomely. Currently, I'm worth something in the region of zero-point-nine billion Galleons."

"Merlin! By staying in the non-magical world, they became richer than the richest of purebloods put together!" exclaimed Tracy, realising how much they'd lost out on.

"Dead on." Harry said approvingly. "I don't expect you to fully lose these ridiculous notions of pureblood superiority immediately, but I'll do my best to debase them. For instance, name the most powerful wizards you know of who are or were alive during the twentieth century.

"Probably Dumbledore, Grindelwald, You-Know-Who and you." admitted Daphne.

"No, I really don't know who, but I assume you're referencing the Dark Lord anagram. Tom Marvolo Riddle, a halfblood bastard child of a near-squib and a minor non-magical nobleman, who changed the letters in his name around to spell I am Lord Voldemort. Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, both halfbloods. I'm a bit different, my maternal grandfather was a pureblood American squib of Native 'Red Indian' heritage who met my maternal grandmother when he came over here with the American military." Harry added; "With a maternal grandmother who was a Black, I've got affinities for lots of different magic. But no Black had ever before married a Potter, and vice-versa, so there was barely any relation there. My mother and father had no blood relations except me. The ferret, Draco, his parents and grandparents were all related, yet he has mediocre skill and little power."

* * *

"Anything to declare?" asked the police officer boredly. Harry decided to lighten up his day.

"Yep, three-hundred small arms, ten main battle tanks and a Vanguard-class Trident nuclear ballistic missile submarine. I keep it in my wallet." he replied with a straight face.

"Nice one sonny." chuckled said police officer.

"Nah, here's my passport, and those of my two companions, forms for one Bentley Continental T Mulliner, European health cards, all the bureaucracy to travel overseas." Harry listed the items as he pulled them out of a briefcase.

"Can I ask why you've got your companions' forms?" asked the officer, checking the forms over and glancing at the two silent women stood behind the young man in the smart suit.

"They are my wards until they come of age. If you need to confirm, get in contact with the right authority and ask for the files on Harold Black, or possibly filed under Blackmore, the Earldom thereof."

"You're kidding with me?" said the police officer.

"Nope." replied Harry; "Check my passport, note instead of Mister, it says Lord. Though I don't use the title unless I am supremely angry at someone."

* * *

"And onto a new world." Harry smirked, removing a Havana cigar from a silver case in his blazer and lighting it.

"Never took you for a smoker." commented Tracey.

"If I'd told you a couple of days ago that you'd be doing a runner to the Continent with me, you'd have laughed at me." he shrugged; "We've all had our illusions shattered."

"What's the rest of the world like?" asked Daphne.

"Like Britain, there's good and bad out there, the landscapes are undoubtedly different. Spain has great mountains, rolling plains, cities and beaches. France, across a range of mountains in the north of Spain, is somewhat more similar to Britain, though there are great rocky cliffs rising from rivers in some parts, often populated by ancient castles. Each country has a unique culture, often changing from town to town, from city to city." replied Harry.


	12. A Corporal Agent to this Terrible Deed

**23rd June 1990, night before the Third Task**

Harry paused cursing Hermione and Ron for their assistance. They were truly devoted to him not just surviving but winning. But, he didn't need the help. They meant well and he simply couldn't explain that he didn't need the assistance. Idly turning his body to dodge a curse from Ron, he smoothly levitated a book into the way of one from Hermione before letting fly two stunners with a mutter.

"Harry!" screamed Hermione as her spell ripped the book apart.

"Hermione!" Harry replied mockingly, pausing in the en garde position.

"You didn't have to use that book." she accused.

"No, but your reaction is amusing." he responded; "Come on, I'm tired of duelling, I need a walk."

"But-" she began.

"Leave it 'Mione." Ron warned.

"I just need some fresh air and some peace and quiet for a few hours." Harry stated, summoning his fleece; "Head to bed you two, it'll be a while before I clear my mind."

The two looked slightly dubious, but helpless as Harry pocketed the Marauder's Map and slipped his invisibility cloak over his shoulders before flipping up the hood. Underneath, he smirked for a moment before walking out, silencing his footsteps with a silent flick of his wand.

Moving with long strides, Harry deftly avoided human contact until he reached the statue of the one-eyed witch. Entering the passage hidden underneath, he pulled off his cloak and broke into a run. His friends' insistence had delayed him. However, hidden beneath the baggy robes and several-sizes-too-big school uniform he normally wore, he was not as stick-like, but had a dancer's lithe build.

Lending all his strength to the dash, he turned what was usually an hour-long walk into a twenty-minute dash. Stopping underneath the village's confectionery, Harry once more swept his cloak over his shoulders and climbed out from the tunnel and slipped through the shop.

Breaking into a fast lope under the cloak, he quickly left the village and swept said cloak off. He once more went into a sprint until he was on the side of the glen blind to the village below the castle. Drawing his wand, Harry let off a couple of light charms before sheltering in the lee of some rocks as a soft whistle broke the silence.

Descending out of the darkness came a Lynx helicopter of the British Army, nearly silent. One of the airborne vehicles of MI5's top secret Section Five. Harry broke a couple of cyalume chem-light sticks that he kept in an enlarged pocket and tossed them around in front of the descending helicopter.

As soon as the machine touched the grass, he summoned them to him and vanished them before snapping open the co-pilot's door of the aircraft. As expected there was only one pilot.

"What kept you so long?" asked John Bearson, a squib in the employ of the Security Service.

"People." Harry replied easily, grabbing a headset and pulling it over his ears; "London and step on it."

* * *

As it was closed, nobody noticed a dark shape detach itself from the evening sky and silently descend into the gardens at the back of Buckingham Palace before lifting off again and vanishing into the darkening heavens. The figure it left behind was wearing simple black slacks and a black overcoat which reached down to his shins.

He moved with slightly tense purpose towards where a classic Rover P5 sat, waiting. An elderly woman with grey curls stepped out of the vehicle, moving to meet him. Harry greeted her with a respectful bow and brushing his lips to the back of her hand before standing, silent, eyeing the man in the suit who was one of two in the car and had climbed out with her. It was only paranoia if they _weren't _out to get you.

"You are ready sir?" she asked formally.

"If I am not, Your Majesty, then I shall make myself scarce and return again, more hell bent than ever before." Harry said calmly but with steel in his tone.

"And you prepared for what you must do?" the Queen repeated.

"Each corporal agent to this terrible deed." he quoted cynically.

She looked at him disapprovingly for a moment before nodding silently and gesturing him to the car.

"Simon, take this young man to Thames House, the home of Our Security Service." she instructed.

Harry glanced at his watch and observed he had half-an-hour until he was due there.

"But first convey me to Westminster Cathedral, I have time to spare." he added.

"As he wishes." the Queen said.

* * *

Harry wasn't a great believer. Being a natural cynic combined with, initially, a crap upbringing and a realistic view of the world around him didn't endear his mind to the idea of an all-seeing benevolent being. However, the idea there was _something_ out there lent him a little hope. There were things inexplicable simply with magic and science. What caused the 'Big Bang'. What created whatever caused the 'Big Bang'. And simpler things. The beauty of such beings as his snow-white Harpy Eagle Hedwig, something he couldn't just explain away as nothing but evolution.

Silently rising from one of the side chapels of the incredible Byzantine-style cathedral, Harry muttered a last prayer before turning his back on the altar and striding out into the main body of the cathedral, purposeful and with a new steel entering his eyes.

"It is unusual to see young people, such as yourself here for anything but tourism." said a soft voice behind him.

Harry spun around, his eyes falling on a distinguished figure, short silver hair, wearing a long black vestment with scarlet piping and a scarlet sash.

"Indeed Your Eminence." he replied with a slight bow; "I can appreciate the material interest in such a building which inspires tourism. I suspect that lessening faith in modern times is because people expect evidence, evidence which has been somewhat obscured by thousands of years."

"Yes, but yet, here you are." Cardinal Hume stated.

"Faith is difficult for me. There are things which no science can explain, but there are events around the world, terrible events which I feel no benevolent all-seeing being would allow." Harry countered smoothly; "It is a balance between evidence, lack of evidence, beliefs and true knowledge. As for me being here, there are times that you would like to have an edge which faith sometimes brings."

"Ah." the last part of his explanation explained very little.

"You must excuse me..." continued Harry, glancing at the watch on his wrist; "My family await me."

Hopefully he wouldn't have to meet them in the next twenty-four hours.

"Go with God." was the simple reply from the cardinal.

* * *

"Enter." came the bark from the far side of the door.

Harry kicked the door open and strode in, his long coat billowing about him in a menacing fashion, adopted from one Severus Snape. He'd grown to be by far the most physically and mentally mature members of his year at Hogwarts, allowing him to pull off the look.

"Good evening Harry." said the person on the far side of the table from him.

"Director Walker." he replied with an amicable nod before turning to the two other men in the room with a slightly more friendly greeting; "Sirius, not looking like crap any more. Remus, having fun keeping the mutt in check?"

"Oh, it has been... interesting." said the werewolf, a grin lighting up his face.

Sirius was nearly bouncing in his chair in excitement, looking far healthier than Harry had ever seen him before. The skeletal look was gone and his waxy skin was beginning to regain some colour and substance.

"Your Director-General has been arranging me to try some non-magical sports. One good one which I've been enjoying is fencing. Course my parents drilled me in it, but with sharp smallswords." Sirius added.

"On a more serious note gentlemen, have you dealt with the school's security leak?" asked the Director-General, tapping the desk with a fountain pen.

"Yes, our fake Alastor Moody placed the portkey cup in the maze this afternoon. I restrained him in his office, interrogated him with some stolen Veritaserum and then locked him in the same trunk as the real Moody." Harry nodded; "I've got no idea of where the cup goes because Tom apparently didn't want that part of his plan compromised."

All four of them made a face. One of displeasure. There were plans to have an entire squadron of the SAS on call to deal with the problem, but if they didn't have the location, then there was no point.

"Damn damn damn. Call the bloody mission off." cursed Walker.

"No. We've invested too much in this, and even if I fail to put down the bastard, we'll have resurrected him in controlled conditions. If one of the other champions is subjected to the ritual, we have no idea if they'll escape alive. And we have four people, one of whom _will_ end up involved. It's best if it's me. Besides, I've got the equipment and some of the training to deal with this." Harry contradicted immediately.

He strode over to the corner of the room where a beautifully carved casket-like chest lay. Made in Persia, painted with beautiful golds, yellows, oranges and blues, it looked like it was made of jewels. Removing a Swiss Army multitool from his pocket, Harry snapped open the knife-blade, and without so much as drawing a pained breath, drew a thin cut on the pad of his left index finger with the razor-sharp edge.

After letting several drops of blood fall onto the casket, Harry had Remus heal the wound.

He then opened the chest. Inside was a beautifully curved Arabian scimitar, with a cross-guard, a slightly weighted head, fashioned from Damascus steel hundreds of years before.

"Riddle, you have no fucking idea who's coming after you. I ain't going to leave any of you and your merry band of terrorists alive." Harry whispered, picking up the sword, swinging it in his right hand in easy figures of eight, always keeping the cutting edge forward on the extension of the strokes.


	13. A Pilot's Tale: High-Speed, High Stakes

**September 2010, Reno - Nevada.**

Harry leaned back in the corner of the marquee in the Nevada desert. He sipped at a chilled bottle of water, calming his racing pulse with a deep breath. He'd occasionally tried air racing before, twice winning the English King's Cup air race, the first time in the mid-late '90s, flying a German Extra EA300 aerobatic plane, and a few months before, had entered in a Supermarine Spitfire Mk. IIA out of boredom.

The slowest aircraft had been a hundred-and-twenty-five mile-per-hour Cessna 152, which, due to it being a handicap race, had set off long before him, as he would be able to sustain a speed about three times that of the Cessna. For a non-customized aircraft, he'd made it dance around the course and smoothly passed every competitor, until the dive for the finishing line where he was miles behind the lead aircraft, but steadily reeled it in to win.

But now he was trying something far more intimidating. The race of races. Reno. Parked up in his little area were two aircraft, a heavily tuned Hawker Sea Fury and a de Havilland Venom with a far more powerful experimental engine. The Sea Fury was running a Bristol Centaurus radial pushing three-thousand horsepower. It had been a two-six-hundred horsepower engine, one of eight that Charlus Potter had raided from the scrapped Bristol Brabazon. However, behind the engine, was a second engine, another Brabazon Centaurus, pushing one of the two contra-rotating five-blade propellers. Along with the removal of the Hispano cannon and the faired-over gun-ports, the canopy was set back further, making for a cleaner shape, made from a single piece of a glass compound.

It sat, ticking away the heat after a practice flight, it was a lean, menacing shape.

By no means was Harry a Reno virgin, he'd flown jets here before, establishing a fearsome reputation. But he'd never flown one of the incredible piston-engined monsters here. Each year between 2004 and 2007, despite his unit being posted to Iraq and Afghanistan, he'd taken a weekend off and brought a Hawker Hunter to the jet class, fending off MiGs, Sabres and various other subsonic fast jets to win each year. It had been because of that that in 2007, they'd put in a rule banning any aircraft with a wing-sweep of over fifteen degrees.

He'd come back with the de Havilland Venom, with a nearly straight wing, the only sweep being a seventeen-degree sweep on the leading edge. It was his seventh jet race and there were a dozen planes, mostly ex-Warsaw Pact trainers, lined up to try and end his reign. Up against the Venom, running a Rolls-Royce Avon which fitted into the fuselage pod with room to spare except lengthways, where they had to extend the aircraft six inches, the opposition stood no chance. With shortened wings, fared-over gun ports and a one-piece canopy, it too was lean, menacing and fast.

"Sir!" called one of the RAF mechanics he'd been lent by the MoD to support his racing. "They're calling for the jet pilots to get in the air for qualifying."

"Thanks." Harry nodded, chucking his bottle of water in the cool box before walking out to the Venom. He stood on the wing as one of the other engineers climbed out, having started the aircraft up for him. Slipping in, Harry clipped on his harness and armed the ejector seat before plugging in his anti-G suit.

The rattle of the engines as the entire cockpit vibrated became a roar, the vibration like riding a blazing machine-gun. After winning pole position in the Venom during qualifying, Harry had once again fended off all comers in the race and now had the jet trophy sat on a pedestal next to the aircraft where the public could see it.

* * *

Then the time of the Sea Fury had come. He'd rolled out onto the runway and run up the aircraft, gleaming in the sun, every rivet flush, every seam filled with a varnish. Taking to the air, through the first three-quarters of his flying lap, Harry d put down an absolutely blistering pace. Then the engines had coughed and he'd began to lose momentum. Radioing urgently, he had pulled the aircraft off the race circuit and brought it down on the runway. After a raft of tests, the engineer's grim pronunciation was water in the fuel.

Harry could only fume with impotent rage as they flushed the engines, the fuel lines, injectors and the tanks to remove any and all water. They were lucky, he'd had all the momentum he'd needed, but if he'd been pulling a six-G turn on one wing-tip and the engine had cut fully, he'd have smacked into the earth at about three-hundred knots. Sabotage was suspected as all the other aircraft had been grounded and checked.

Luckily, the ethanol tanks were untouched, as were the nitrous-oxide bottles, meaning they would have plenty of boost, on top of the much-upgraded Roots-type supercharger. So he was rolling out in dead last position for the bronze heat, hell bent on working up to first place to take him to the silver heat, which he also intended to win, to take their aircraft, their team, and himself to the final race where the giants would clash.

Easing the fighter off the ground, Harry flipped the switch for the undercarriage, hearing the whine as it came up, followed by a series of light _thunks_ as the wheels hit the wells. Applying the wheel brakes to stop them spinning in the wheel wells, he throttled back and hung on the tail of the Mustang in front of him.

Unlimited Race aircraft more often than not came in five forms, Hawker Sea Furies, North American P-51 Mustangs, Grumman F8F Bearcats and completely custom builds, usually around the centre section of Mustangs. His Sea Fury had cropped wings, a larger tail, streamlining, both engines running a far more powerful engine tune of about three-five-hundred horsepower maximum and a new contra-rotating propeller with a total of ten blades.

So as the race of half-a-dozen aircraft crossed the start-finish line, he smoothly pushed the throttle open to nearly full power, easing it over onto its port wing-tip. Pulling back, the aircraft on a knife-edge, he kept the first pylon in the corner of his eye. He cut through alongside a Mustang, gaining fifth place.

Within the Sea Fury's cockpit were various controls, however, in front of the throttle quadrant with the twin levers for the Bristol Centauri, was a second box, with two similar levers that no other Sea Fury had, one for the E85 and one for the N20. Harry had already passed a P-51 Mustang and directly ahead, was a P-40 Kittyhawk, an F-4 Wildcat, another P-51 Mustang, a Sea Fury and an F4U Corsair who was leading. He intended to hunt down each and every one of them.

Grimacing slightly as the oil temperature soared in unison with the noise of the engines, Harry kept easing open the chemical boost. The P-40 simply didn't have the power. It wasn't race-customised, whereas he'd spent hundreds of thousands of pounds, as well as unthinkable man-hours on readying his aircraft to race.

Then the Wildcat fell behind on the very short straight at the top of the circuit before he reduced the boost, turning to port again as the second pylon passed a hundred feet below his wing-tip. The course between pylon two and pylon three was a shallow turn, far less demanding than the start-finish to the first pylon.

Roaring past the third pylon, he opened up onto back straight, pushing open the throttles and the boost levers to maximum. Each and every one of the three-thousand plus horsepower from each engine pulled, his twin five-blade contra-rotating propeller dragging the fighter to four-hundred and fifty miles an hour on the shallow-curving back straight. He was in third, in front of him were the second Mustang, the Sea Fury and the Corsair.

Pulling even with the Mustang, Harry closed the boost, straining slightly as the g-force pushed him into his seat, hard. Side-by-side, they roared through pylons four, five, six and seven, the Sea Fury's larger size meaning it had a slightly worse turning circle compared to the smaller, lighter Mustang, an aircraft which when fully loaded, weighed less than the Sea Fury when it wasn't loaded with anything at all.

Then dipping the nose as they levelled onto the main straight, six-thousand horsepower began to tell as the P-51 simply fell back, crossing the edge of Harry's vision before vanishing below the wing. Looking up, he narrowed his eyes, fixing the mirror in his gaze.

The P-40 had followed him through and had made up a place, relegating the Wildcat to second-to-last place, while the Mustang he'd just overtaken was hanging on his tail, trying to turn tighter and faster. For a few moments, Harry was worried that he'd make the move stick. Looking ahead, as they turned into pylon one, the other Sea Fury cut the corner and overtook the Corsair which had been leading.

As the pack hurtled through top curve, through pylons one, two and three, the Mustang held even with Harry, its turning circle fighting against the raw speed of the Sea Fury, but once again as they emerged onto the slightly curving back straight, it began to fall back.

Harry hurtled into the fight between the Corsair and the other Sea Fury, turning into the curve of the straight, cutting straight between them with about fifty feet separation. He was in first place and in no mood to relinquish it, not that the other aircraft had enough grunt to keep up.

* * *

The day went by in a torrent of aviation fuel, nitrous-oxide and adrenaline. Speed, more speed, even more speed. Everything was concentrated in eking every bit of potential out of the monstrous Sea Fury, 'Spitting Fury'. He'd been bumped up to the silver heat where he started encountering mildly modified aircraft, but the British aircraft, painted in a fetching night-sky blue with tiny pinpricks of stars on it, had roared past to take first place.

From dead last to first place in the silver heat wasn't bad. Then he was invited to the Breitling Gold Heat where the unlimited monsters competed. A two-thousand five-hundred horsepower Yakovlev Yak-11 called 'Czech Mate', two three-thousand six-hundred horsepower P-51s, 'Strega' and 'Voodoo', F-8F Bearcat 'Rare Bear', the fastest piston-engined aircraft in the world, three-thousand horsepower Sea Fury 'Riff Raff', four-thousand horsepower Sea Fury 'Dreadnought' and four-thousand horsepower 'stock' P-51 'Ridge Runner III'.

Up against these, even Harry's poker face was being strained with the stress. They'd upped the boost... then upped it again. The cooling maximised and only just enough fuel to finish the race and land on board, no more. However, he first had to deal with a less customized pair of a Bearcat and a Sea Fury before he could tangle with the monsters. But despite his nervousness, Harry did have the utmost confidence in Hawker's airframe, Bristol's engines, and the engineers, the best the RAF had to offer, a couple pulled out of retirement.

Dropping down 'the chute' onto the start-finish straight, Harry fixed the two aircraft directly ahead of him in his vision. They soared down the straight, and into the first turn. Instead of trying to hold a tight line by throttling back, he jammed the throttle and boost levers fully open. Maximum speed.

The Bearcat couldn't hold as tight a turn, nor could it hold the speed. Harry was in eighth. Staying above and to the starboard of the other Sea Fury, he held the turn, a smooth bank to port past pylons two and three before opening up onto the back straight. He out-dragged the seventh placed aircraft, taking its place. He was now in the pack of immensely powerful custom racers. In front of him was 'Czech Mate', flying just below him and to his port, while 'Riff Raff' was ahead of the Yak.

Harry pulled into a shallow turn as they raced through past pylon four, then dragged the stick back into his stomach for the much tighter pylon five-six-seven turn. Pulling out onto the start-finish straight as his vision returned from the blood-drain, Harry was disappointed that the Yak was still ahead. But then as he levelled out, he spotted to his starboard and behind, 'Riff Raff', falling behind. They'd both passed the Sea Fury.

Going into a very shallow dive, Harry checked the turn-and-slip meter, making sure that he was flying dead-straight, trying to out-drag the monstrous custom Yakovlev down the straight. They were side-by-side, each pilot eyeing the other as they hurled themselves past the start-finish line, turning hard to pylon one, at which point the Yak was turning tighter. Then on the more straight exit from pylon one to pylon two, he was able to regain everything with pure grunt. Steadily, as the curve became shallower and shallower, opening onto the back straight, he pulled ahead, the over-boosted engines pulling 'Spitting Fury' through past 'Czech Mate'.

Together, the two aircraft, doing nearly four-hundred and sixty miles an hour, stormed down the back straight, Harry willing every bit of power from his engine. He needed it, because he did _not_ want to lose his hard-earned place in sixth when they reached the tighter pylon five-six turn.

Pulling ahead, he kept flying smoothly, turning tightly into the turn, levelling out slightly for the shallower curve into pylon seven. The Yakovlev had to back off, he had the racing line and flying into his wash would not be beneficial. However, their furious flying had them hurtling down the straight at extreme speeds.

Harry kept half-an-eye on his speedometer as it climbed. Four-forty MPH. Four-fifty... Four-sixty. The air speed indicator was banging against the end of Hawker's readings. Switching his eye to the digital readout on top of the instrument panel, his eyes widened. Four-seventy and climbing. Four-seventy-five. Four-eighty. Still climbing.

Four-eighty-five. Harry was sweating, he was flying far faster than the aircraft should ever have done at this low a level and on the straight and level. Four-ninety, still climbing. Four-ninety-five. He eased the nose down slightly. Four-ninety-seven. He kept going, even as the pylon hove into view. FIVE HUNDRED! Harry's glove on the stick was soaked with sweat. The fighter was still accelerating. Five-oh-five. Five-oh-seven. Pitching the nose down further. Five hundred and ten. He throttled back and turned tighter than he'd ever want to again.

G-forces crushed him into his seat, and only instinct kept him in the turn, sustaining blackout even despite the anti-G suit squeezing his legs, constricting the blood-drain. Instinct kept him turning, pylon one, pylon two, pylon three. He swept past the pylon, regaining his vision as 'Spitting Fury', already doing about four-hundred hurtled down the back straight. Once again, Harry had to keep himself from being mesmerised by the ever increasing speed shown on the digital readout, keeping his gaze flicking about him for aircraft, ground and pylons.

He had faintly noticed a Mustang seemingly flying backwards as he exited the turn, still suffering from blackout. Last he'd known, the nearest P-51 was two places ahead of him in fourth. So either he'd not noticed passing another aircraft, or said other aircraft had passed the P-51 and was still ahead of him, with him in fifth.

"Report!" Harry barked over the radio.

"_Spitting Fury, you are in fourth place. You have planes ahead, Bear, Voodoo and Strega, do you copy?_" rattled off a highly-efficient voice.

"Copied." he grunted.

Fourth place then. And he was on lap four of eight. And he started in tenth.

Putting down a blistering pace over the next lap and a half, hanging onto the pack of 'Rare Bear', 'Voodoo' and 'Strega'. Then as they threw their aircraft down the back straight, he noticed a small amount of smoke coming from the purple P-51 in second place. It was Voodoo. And there was more smoke than should have been.

"Racer five, smoke exiting exhausts." he snapped.

"_Roger._" was the brisk response.

The smoke increased and 'Voodoo' pulled out of the circuit with a mayday call. Two left. Harry carried as much speed as possible through the bottom end of the circuit, and as they accelerated out, he pushed and pushed and pushed. 'Rare Bear' was doing much the same, but as the Sea Fury was pushing nearly twice the power, the Bearcat having a bigger frontal area, meaning more air resistance, and the twin five-blade Sea Fury propellers pulled better, it wasn't exactly difficult.

The luridly painted 'Rare Bear' held its own against the more understated-decorated 'Spitting Fury', both hurtling down the straight at unthinkable speeds for piston-engined planes. Harry saw his earlier record busted by himself, five-hundred and fifteen. They were playing a game of chicken. Whoever broke first would carry less speed into the corner, but if they left it too late, they would overrun. In the end, they broke nearly simultaneously, but Harry had more speed and carried it through the corner ahead of the Bearcat.

They were onto lap seven, the penultimate lap. Still close together, 'Rare Bear' and 'Spitting Fury' pounded around, Harry taking the tightest flying lines he could get away with and applying the absolute maximum power all the way round the circuit. They had caught up with the red-painted 'Strega', flying three in line-abreast.

Rare Bear had to back off as they came out of the corner onto the start-finish straight nearly into the back of another Bearcat, the last-placed aircraft. Neither 'Spitting Fury' or 'Strega' gave an inch. Flying closer than was completely safe, they hurtled by the slower-moving Bearcat, lapping it.

Once again, he was locked in a competition like he had fought with 'Czech Mate'. The Mustang turned tighter and was lighter. He had some pretty damn good grunt. The engines were running far higher boost, as well as chemical injection and a manganese-compound fuel, giving a level of horsepower none of the engineers, or the pilot, really knew. That wasn't to say the Sea Fury couldn't turn.

Both of them roared down the start-finish straight at over five-hundred miles-per-hour. Harry saw his second record broken by 'Strega', mere seconds before he overhauled 'Strega' and re-took the record speed. He'd put in _three_ record speeds in one race. As the two aircraft approached pylon one, they were wing-tip to wing-tip, 'Strega' holding the racing line. Harry throttled back slightly and dipped the nose earthwards while flying into the corner on his port wing-tip. He was losing speed but he got an even tighter turn and avoided the P-51's wash.

Slamming open the throttle, he held his height, eyeing 'Strega', which was above him and to his starboard, turning across him into the back straight. Harry cursed and put the nose down again, diving towards the earth. He grinned slightly, nap-of-the-earth flying was his kind of thing.

"_Racer six-six-six, you're crazy man!_" yelled Strega's young pilot dumbly as he watched 'Spitting Fury' hurtling towards the earth at four-hundred miles-per-hour, and accelerating the whole way.

"Just as well, otherwise this would never work." Harry replied flippantly.

He turned into pylon four, a shallow turn, easing the aircraft through to pylon five at four-fifty miles-per-hour. At twenty feet. He kept pulling back steadily, past pylon five, glancing up at it as he passed. Pylon six also passed above and to his right, with the aircraft flying on its port side. Levelling out hard as the two aircraft raced through pylon seven, he quickly throttled back an inch and then slammed the lever back open, pushing more fuel into the cylinders than was normal, boosting the amount of bang he got.

The Mustang was higher and had further to travel to get start-finish line. The Sea Fury was lower and had less distance to travel but had not carried quite as much speed through due to his tighter turns. Harry couldn't believe what he was doing. From dead last to drag-racing for the title of National Unlimited Champion.

Above him, 'Strega' edged ahead in her dive, but the immense grunt of 'Spitting Fury' was pulling him to stay in the game. The Sea Fury's twin Bristol Centaurus engines weren't going to give in. The Sea Fury wasn't going to give in. Harry wasn't going to give in. He was at thirty feet. Pitching the nose down in a shallow descent, he kept pressing the boost and throttle levers as hard as he could, even knowing that they were already at one-hundred percent. There was no way in hell he wasn't going to give it his best. As one of his personal heroes once said.

"For Britain and for the hell of it!"

Harry muttered this as he checked the turn-and-slip, checked the artificial horizon, making sure he wasn't wasting an single bit of speed by sliding or ascending. He gently pitched the nose down towards the start-finish line. Given that he was at about thirty feet, this wasn't a great descent.

"_Six-six-six, confirm onboard speed._" barked a voice in his ear.

"Digital reads five-four-two-point-two. Confirm with telemetry." Harry rattled off.

"_Confirmed._"

Then the two aircraft roared past the start-finish line. From turning onto the straight to finishing the race had taken just ten seconds.

"_All racers, all racers, circle and land, order is Spitting Fury, Strega, Rare Bear, Czech Mate, Ridge Runner, Dreadnought, Riff Raff, Fury and Bearcat._" buzzed the radio; "_Proceed to the stand, you will be marshalled in._"

Harry grinned. That indicated that he had been ahead of Strega. Pulling up to five-hundred feet, which happened in seconds due to the immense speed he was carrying, he pulled through on a wider line past pylons one, two and three. Flying a straight line past the curving back straight, he lowered the air-speed sufficiently to lower his flaps and undercarriage. He passed pylon four and kept going. With enough room, he executed a neat one-eighty degree turn and lined up onto the start-finish straight which passed along the main runway.

Keeping the rudder at an angle, Harry lowered the nose slightly, bringing the Sea Fury in a side-slipping turn. He was bleeding off speed quickly, needing to lower the speed from what he had been carrying to a reasonable landing speed. Also, side-slipping allowed him to see past the immense cowling to the runway.

Easing the aircraft down, he felt a slight bump as he executed a perfect three-point landing. It was over. Harry flipped up his helmet sun-visor and blinked at the change. Brushing a glove over his forehead, he realised how much he'd sweated. Pushing back the canopy, he recoiled slightly from the air, seemingly cool as it hit him. He knew it was only because of his speed. Nevada summer air was like a furnace.

* * *

"So how does it feel, winning twice at the most high-performance motorsport?" asked an American journalist as Harry and Strega's pilot walked down the flight-line, both sipping from bottles of champagne. They had in fact crossed the line in a dead heat and had both been awarded the win.

"It's different." Harry smirked, eyes twinkling behind his aviator shades; "Still, little Steve here gave a good showing, for a scrawny teenager."

"Hey! I'm twenty-two!" protested Strega's pilot.

"Scrawny adult." he amended; "I admit I haven't had this much fun since an incident involving a large, very energetic pig, a gallon of tank grease and the Chief of the Defence Staff's ball."

"You didn't!" mock-gasped Steve, already having gauged his competitor.

"I did." Harry replied; "Come on, let's head back to our pits, my crew's got a fifty-gallon drum of proper beer, not that piss that you Yanks drink."

"Anyway, I heard words like 'Bristol' and 'Centaurus' as regards to your engine, but what the heck was it?" asked Steve curiously as they walked back towards the hulking form of the RAF C130.

"Basically we took two Centaurus engines, and welded the together to create a four-row hundred-and-seven point-two litre radial worth a bit over six-thousand horsepower. Obviously the aircraft is a lot heavier because we had to ballast the rear end to get a good centre of gravity." Harry explained.

He might have been a soldier ever since MI5 had attached him to the SAS in 1990, aged fifteen after the death of Tom Riddle, but flying was one of the things he loved.


	14. Not THE Pilot's Tale: French Jet

**2012**

"Potter, try not being such a total dick." growled the black-haired woman glaring at him from across the room, over an aeroplane magazine.

"I simply cannot comprehend how someone can be over sixteen and quite than naïve Georgie." he responded mildly, applying his concentration to gluing together two halves of a Airfix de Havilland Mosquito fuselage.

"Honestly, I think you put far more effort into disliking children than you actually dislike them. The poor kid only said that he didn't understand why we didn't spend more on defence over political posturing, you didn't need to bite his head off, I mean, do you have any social skills?" she riposted.

"Stopped bothering with socialising in nineteen-ninety. It was overrated anyway." said Harry; "Anyway, I didn't bite his head off, as far as I'm concerned it was merely a changing of his point of view."

"Huh, you actually believe what you're saying." commented Georgie; "Tell you what, given that you need to find out how normal humans work, you can come to Boscombe Down on Saturday with us for the air experience."

"Got to be at work." Harry denied immediately, slowly putting the partly built model down on the desk and leaning back, meeting the woman's gaze.

"Tell your boss that you want a couple of hours off in the morning." Georgie shrugged apathetically.

"Why? What's there to be gained by me flying around in the aviation equivalent of a Nissan Micra?" he demanded, ignoring the way that the other occupants' eyes flicked between the woman in the RAF blue uniform of a Flying Officer and the man wearing civilian khaki cargo trousers and a t-shirt which hugged a lithely muscled chest.

"Plenty. And it would give you an opportunity to try interacting with us mere humans. The other good reasons are that if you don't I'll kick your head in." responded Georgie heatedly.

What she didn't expect was barking laughter from the man her ire was directed at.

"Thanks, I haven't had a good laugh like that in years!" he commented.

"Be careful, she attends martial arts lessons and _will_ kick your head in." warned one of the officers.

"If she can kick my head in, then she deserves it. And it is an if, I'd say I'm capable of stopping most attackers without resorting to weapons. Twenty years practice makes sure of that." Harry snorted.

"Which discipline?" Georgie asked, curiosity momentarily overcoming ire.

"Krav Maga and eskrima." said Harry with a slightly predatory grin; "Though there's a few others I'm not bad at, those are the only ones I'm rated as a full master."

"Sorry, I'm missing something here." said the CO of the Air Cadet unit, Flight Lieutenant Robert Jackson, looking from his horrified officer to the civilian instructor; "I mean being a master of a martial art or two is good and all..."

"Krav Maga is a rather infamous martial art." Harry explained; "It utilises anything that can be used as a weapon, and defends against same. The only aim is to maim, incapacitate or kill your opponent in as short a time as possible, no matter what weapon he has, or lack thereof. The same for most of the other martial arts I've learnt over the last twenty years. Where other martial arts like the Oriental ones concentrate somewhat on mental preparation and suchlike. Krav Maga, Silat Melayu, and of course cudgels and eskrima. Though honestly, at the time I only took up the latter two because they look cool and the latter means I can call myself an eskrimador, which sounds cool."

"Anyway, even if you are so brilliant at martial arts as you say, that does not change the fact you are going to be participating, even if it's just because _I say so_." Georgie continued.

"How far do you think this argument's going to go?" whispered Pilot Officer Bill Hay to the CO; "Do you think they'll get past the mutual flirting to the snogging?"

A moment later a cricket ball impacted the wall behind him from a glaring Georgie while Harry just gave him an unblinking stare of utter disbelief.

"Are you both stupid and suicidal? Also, relationships require social lives, social lives are for people with nothing better to do with their time." he said slowly; "Anyway Georgie luv, where did you say this air experience thing is, because I am not riding in a converted van with a bunch of roudy kids."

"Boscombe Down, and call me 'love' again and I'll hurt you... badly." she replied.

"I guess I can be there, my work's around there." Harry shrugged eventually, before glancing at his watch; "Time to dismiss the teenagers."

* * *

"I'd actually quite like to be a pilot here." commented Georgie as they walked through the corridors of the RAF Volunteer Reserve part of Boscombe Down. She had arrived with part of the squadron and one of the other officers to find Harry sitting in the briefing room sipping from a cup of coffee and flicking through a classic car magazine.

"Oh, I'd have taken you for a front line pilot if you decided to sign up." Harry replied with a raised eyebrow, actually slightly surprised.

Unlike what most thought, while often the two argued, it was never heated, but more a banter, and when they conversed properly, they actually listened to each-other. Though there were more sarcastic retorts in said conversations than most people tended to use.

"No, I've always been somewhat enamoured with the idea of being a test pilot, flying on the edge of the unknown." she shook her head.

"You do realise there probably is a lot of paperwork and testing of new bits of programming? I think you're idolising the job a bit, maybe once it would have been like that, now its a lot of health and safety reports and other bits of paperwork." said Harry; "And anyway, I'd expect that they are still pretty selective with who they hire?"

"Yeah, I suppose you're right. Anyway, have you been up yet?" Georgie responded, glancing at the flying suit he was wearing, and had been since before they'd arrived.

"Went up for half an hour in one of the trainers." he nodded, adding mentally; 'A QinetiQ Dornier Alphajet actually.' before continuing smoothly; "It was a rather... different experience."

"Hah! That's the most smooth understatement I've ever heard." laughed Georgie; "But not bad. I've been with the Air Cadets since I was thirteen, seventeen years and I've only done about a hundred hours. By the way, isn't that a G-suit for jet flights you're wearing?"

"It was the first which fitted me." Harry answered honestly, it had been the first to fit him about a year ago; "I saw one of the QinetiQ Dorniers go up with a load of testing equipment in the back, apparently testing some kind of fly-by-wire system like most modern fighters use and there's a Dassault Mirage 2000 sitting on the stand with a full war load of various weapons I didn't recognize and Sidewinder missiles."

"I thought that the Quick Reaction Alert force was provided with Tornados?" Georgie asked, glancing out of a window into a large hanger where a green Lockheed C-130J was parked.

"Yeah, this is probably a test airframe." replied Harry; 'My test airframe which I'll be taking up once you lot aren't around, or when you're all flying.'

"Flying Officer Silver, if you'd like to go down to the briefing room, just a short briefing before you go up." said an officer, poking his head around a door in the corridor.

Harry grinned slightly as she dashed off.

"Thanks Bill. I'm going to head down to the Mirage now, while nobody is looking." he stated.

"No problem boss." replied the officer; "Your ground crew inform me that all the checks are complete and as soon as you arrive they'll have the engine running. How d'you get that level of devotion?"

"Gotta love the enthusiasm." Harry laughed; "The answer is I hand-picked them all, they're all brilliant, but until recently had no employment, so when I came along with an offer to work on fast jets, they nearly prostrated themselves before me. A few of the most senior were technicians on Harriers and the retired Tornadoes who found themselves out of jobs, and when I was given charge here, I didn't want talent going to waste."

As they walked down a staircase to the tarmac where a scruffy open-top Land Rover was waiting, Bill asked;

"How did you come to be running the RAF detachment with QinetiQ?"

"You weren't here then were you?" Harry mused, Bill being a reserve officer who had accepted a posting about six months before to the airfield; "I used to be a brown job, on the ground in the mud. Or more often, sand. I'd intended to retire after Iraq, I thought it suitable that my career started in Iraq, in late 1990, and ended in Iraq. Someone phoned me up two weeks into retirement and told me that they could do with me taking up this role. I'd gone through flight training after Bosnia in '96, so I didn't need more than a refresher course. I was sent on an ambassadorial mission to the French Armée de l'Air when we deployed to Libya, so I got to fly missions over the country. That's why I insist on having a Mirage here."

They climbed into the Land Rover and raced down the taxiway to the stand where half-a-dozen of the white Grob Tutors were parked along with a Dassault Mirage 2000-5 Mark 2.

"Right boss, don't crash and die horribly will you." Bill said cheerfully as Harry climbed out and went over to the aircraft which had technicians crawling over it and a ladder on the side of the cockpit. He shimmied up the ladder, ignoring Bill's upbeat comment and stepped into the cockpit.

Placing his hands on the rim of the windscreen, he levered himself into the cockpit fully as a QinetiQ briefing officer climbed up beside him to discuss what had been changed. The aircraft itself was already a significantly modified one with various bits of British equipment replacing a few of the less compatible French systems, allowing it to be used as a test-bed without drawing from the very strained pool of Eurofighter Typhoons

Originally, they'd had half-a-dozen Mirage 2000Cs they'd got off the French for tuppence on the surplus market, but after a few months of use, the French had offered a pair of 2000-5 Mark 2s for their use. The offered airframes had been snapped up and ferried from an Armée de l'Air airbase to Boscombe Down.

"Give me the changes Ian." Harry ordered as he pushed his flight-plan into a plastic pouch adhered to the top of the control panel ahead of him.

"Basically, the contractors who maintain the weapons have done some minor modifications to the guidance chips on the missiles for which Dassault's programming engineers have had to make a few tweaks to your onboard systems. You're running three AIM-9 Sidewinders which are not modified, they are to test the programming. There are two German IRIS-T infrared guided missiles, range of about fifteen miles which we want to compare to the subject of your flight. AIM-132 ASRAAM missiles, range of about thirty miles." explained the officer; "We want you to go up to one of the RAF firing ranges, Holbeach, the army has provided a couple of Banshee drones to shoot at. You expend a Sidewinder, and if that goes fine, no problems then proceed to fire an IRIS-T. Observe and compare to your last discharge, an ASRAAM. You've got enough of each in case of failures, and just in case you decide to manually range or just get bored, two-fifty rounds of thirty mil."

"Good good." Harry grinned, removing one of the maps from his briefing document and pinning it to the side of the cockpit. Old-fashioned or not, he liked to have a manual method of navigation, laminated paper and a chinagraph pencil. They generally didn't fail, but sometimes other navigation systems could.

Ian, the QinetiQ officer climbed down the ladder and away across the stand. Harry pulled on his flying helmet and flipped down the clear visor, testing the oxygen supply. Leaning out, he looked at the engineer stood off the left side of the nose, waiting as the engineer glanced around, making sure the stand was clear before raising both hands, thumbs up so that they were visible to the fighter's pilot.

"CLEAR!" Harry barked.

Pressing the ignition and the starter buttons, Harry held them down as his left hand eased open the throttle the engine ran up. A short whine and then the roar of burning jet fuel rushed across the airfield. He was just finishing the last checks when the radio buzzed to life.

"_Echo Golf Delta Mike, this is AJET callsign Bravo zero-one. Mayday, mayday, mayday. Fly-by-wire failure, we are twenty-two knots heading approximately five degrees north north-east._" came a rapid but calm delivery over the radio. AJET was the shorthand name for the Dassault-Dornier Alpha Jet.

"Bravo zero-one, this is Guardian Actual, how much control do you have?" Harry cut off the air traffic control before they could begin to respond.

"_Guardian, control is one tenth, inputs cause change in flight, but not as wanted. There is no pattern, so cannot just reverse inputs to get same direction._" replied Flying Officer Richard Edgecombe who was flying the test-bed Dornier with a bunch of computers in the back seat.

"Bravo zero-one, are you closing towards Salisbury?" he demanded; "Do you think you can get the aircraft back to anywhere, even landing in a field?"

"_I am attempting to deviate... Sorry, it's an affirmative, heading towards Salisbury._" sighed the pilot; "_I really don't think I can get back to base and I'm nearly as certain that an attempted landing would not go well._"

"Bravo zero-one, stay with the aircraft, that's an order! Echo Golf Delta Mike, this is Guardian Actual, scramble QRA." he ordered.

"_Quick Reaction Alert force are grounded for maintenance._" replied the Boscombe Down controller.

"Echo Golf Delta Mike, demanding takeoff runway bearing two-three, do you copy." Harry barked, leaning out of the cockpit again, gesturing to his engineer.

He eased open the throttle and released the brakes as the ground crew pulled the chocks out from the aircraft's undercarriage, pulling away smoothly.

"_Guardian zero-one this is control, I copy, runway two-three is clear for takeoff, you have a five-minute window._" replied the air traffic controller.

"Roger Echo Golf Delta Mike, will proceed immediately to runway two-three and takeoff." said Harry, lowering the canopy as he moved.

A few long, tense seconds later, he was at the end of the runway. Easing open the throttle to full, he kept going, full afterburner on. Twenty-one thousand pounds of thrust from its Snecma M53 turbofan kicked the aircraft forward, hard. Harry held the Mirage at about twenty feet above the runway as he gathered speed, not expending any of his ever-increasing momentum on climbing.

The undercarriage came up with a muffled thud, at which point, the Mirage was quickly accelerating to six-hundred knots and kept going to seven-hundred miles an hour.

"Bravo zero-one, say altitude, say speed, over." Harry radioed.

"_Guardian zero-one, flight level seventy-five, lateral speed, four-hundred knots, twenty miles from Boscombe, losing height at rate of about seventy-five feet a second._" replied Richard, beginning to sound slightly panicked; "_Orders sir! I can't stay in the aircraft._"

"I'll be with you in a few seconds. The only reason I've left you in there is data." Harry replied immediately; "Control, do you have us on scopes?"

"_Guardian, affirmative._" was the answer.

Harry quickly calculated, four-hundred knots was about four-hundred and sixty miles an hour. It would take about a hundred and fifty seconds to cross the twenty miles to the airfield. Richard was at seven and a half thousand feet, but losing seventy-five feet a second, he would be splattered across the landscape in one-hundred seconds if that rate of descent continued. He'd fall short of the airfield by over six miles. Right in Salisbury.

He wanted to intercept at four-thousand feet. The Dornier would have to lose 3500 feet, which at seventy-five feet a second would take just forty-seven seconds. In that time it would be six miles closer to Boscombe Down. He had fourteen miles to cover in forty-seven seconds, requiring a speed over a thousand miles an hour.

If he stayed at seven-hundred, he would only cover nine miles in that time, the Dornier would be in the same place, but he'd be five miles short. He could cover those five miles in about twenty-five seconds. His target would have descended over nineteen hundred feet to two-thousand one-hundred but also be three miles behind him.

"Bollocks!" came the muttered curse over the radio; "Echo Golf Delta Mike, going supersonic."

Harry slammed the throttle open and accelerated up to twelve-hundred miles-per-hour before bleeding off a bit of speed by climbing, down to one-thousand and seventy two miles-per-hour, climbing at a rate of five-thousand one-hundred and six feet a minute, or four-thousand feet in forty-seven seconds. Their closing speed was about fifteen hundred miles-per-hour.

"_Roger Guardian, you are closing, I say forty seconds, Bravo will be to your port side, about ten-o'clock high._" control guided him in to his beleaguered pilot; "_Do you copy?_"

"I copy control. Richard, bang out, bang out on my word!" he ordered.

"_Wilco._" the Dornier pilot replied, slightly more calmly with the presence of the Mirage approaching fast and the order to leave the doomed test aircraft.

Forty seconds later, Harry snapped the jet around as he spotted the Dornier on radar and out of the corner of his eye. Coming up to it from behind to one side, he jammed on the air-brakes and eyed the land below them. They were flying towards the River Avon, or the water meadows around it, which was fine with him.

"Now!" Harry ordered.

He saw the flash of light and the jump seat leave the jet. It separated from the pilot and he tumbled away, far behind and below them, his parachute opening. Harry had opened the cover on the master arm switch, setting the fire control radar to the twin DEFA 30mm revolver cannons. He didn't have time for radar-locking missiles.

Set to a one-second burst, Harry fired. The twin DEFA cannons unleashed a hail of shells, twenty-two each. The projectiles each weighed two-hundred and twenty grams, nearly ten kilograms of metal leaving the muzzles. They smacked into the Dornier which promptly disintegrated and blew up spectacularly.

Glancing at the fuel computer on his control panel as he flew away from the fireball, Harry quickly worked out that he had a range of about five-hundred miles left, so turned north-east and climbed.

"Area control, this is Guardian one-zero, proceeding at flight-level two-zero-zero, bearing zero-three-five to RAF Holbeach, do you copy?"

"_I copy Guardian one-zero._" replied the area controller; "_We are having some issues due to a supersonic shockwave in the Salisbury area._"

"I have absolutely no idea why." Harry commented.

* * *

He hadn't been in the mood to stick around at Holbeach. Approaching the range at a mere six-fifty knots, eleven and a half less than the speed of sound, he'd alerted the army to his presence by flying a few feet over their heads before pointing his jet skyward and screaming to twenty-thousand feet in about twenty seconds. Quickly hunting down a drone with his fire control radar, Harry launched a Sidewinder at short range, two miles.

With the first test making sure the programming was working, he'd rapidly disposed of the other two drones with his other missiles, an ASRAAM and an IRIS-T. The flight to Holbeach had taken just twelve minutes and he'd stayed around for less than five minutes before turning south-east and opening the throttle.

* * *

Just under half-an-hour after it left, the Mirage returned, a slight puff of smoke from the wheels as it hit the deck before the braking parachute blossomed out behind the jet, slowing it massively. With the chute released and a chase car catching it, he taxied onto the stand and cut the engine.

With the pneumatic hiss of the canopy easing open having stopped, Harry peeled off his helmet and dumped it on the edge of the windscreen in front of him before levering himself up onto his feet. One of the engineers propped up a ladder onto the cockpit sill, allowing him to quickly descend onto the concrete of the stand.

"Richard's in the hanger boss." reported one of his engineers.

"Thanks." Harry nodded, dropping into one of the open-top Land Rovers.

"Have you ever banged out boss?" asked Richard, sitting in the galley of the C-130 parked on one side of the test squadrons' main hanger.

"Twice." Harry replied with good humour as they sipped at mugs of coffee; "'September '96 with 233 OCU, I was in a Harrier, at the controls with an instructor sitting in the back doing fuck all when the engine decided to eat a large seagull. Needless to say it didn't end well. The second time was deliberate, testing a bang seat in a Gloster Meteor for Martin-Baker. Anyway, I need to know what happened."

"I've got it all on helmet cam, I'll write the specifics up later." Richard said with a slight grimace; "Just put it at sudden uncontrollable descent and the controls responding randomly to any input."

"Right, good lad. Have the medics had a look at you?" Harry enquired.

"Only a basic first aid going over from one of the boys over at the rotary squadron who picked me up." answered Richard after a moment.

"And where were the search and rescue helicopters?" said Harry, raising an eyebrow.

"Down for maintenance I think." Richard stated, a sardonic smirk on his face.

"Right, no QRA, no SAR, what kind of air force is this?" Harry scowled.

* * *

Georgie sat in the crew room, slightly uncomfortable in the tense silence. In the space of an hour, she'd heard the radio-chatter between a Dornier Alphajet and a Dassault Mirage, the pilot of the latter had a distinctive husky baritone she was certain was Harry's. Then after all flights had been recalled to Boscombe Down, some senior officers had arrived, apparently from RNAS Yeovilton, RAF Benson, RAF Odiham.

Then the door burst open and nearly flew off the hinges. Harry stormed in, still clad in a flying suit with anti-G trousers and the four stripes of a Group Captain, followed by one of the pilots.

"Gentlemen, I'd like to enquire why, despite full knowledge due to radio communications that you did _not_ deploy SAR forces which are available at all of your bases?" he hissed.

He was angrier than she'd ever seen the normally mild man.

"Due to budget restrictions-" began one of the officers, standing up.

"Sit down and shut up!" Harry barked; "Any of you got a reasonable excuse?"

"We assumed-" one of the others began.

"Sit down and shut up!" he snarled.

"Our aircraft were down for emergency maintenance sir." said one of the younger officers; "I wasn't going to risk sending anyone out in defective airframes."

"At least one of you isn't a colossal imbecile." sneered Harry; "You kid, try and keep at least one airframe in working order. The rest of you shove off, you're no longer needed."

"You know, I haven't seen him quite that angry since Basra back in '05." commented one of the Boscombe Down test pilots who had gone out in a test-bed CH-47 Chinook to pick up Richard. He was an ex-7 Squadron UK Special Forces Aviation Wing pilot who'd been recruited straight out of the RAF into the Empire Test Pilot's School.


	15. A Pilot's Tale: Hunter Hunts the Hunters

**Early 2011, the Mediterranean**

Thirty-five year-old Hadrian Potter, current Officer Commanding of 22 SAS was bored. He'd received an urgent summons from an American General who was at RAF Akrotiri, and just to show the American that he could _not_ be called to heel like a dog, he'd stopped on Malta for a couple of hours of site seeing, after reassuring the Maltese that the IRIS-T guided air-to-air missiles mounted on the wings of his Hawker Hunter FGA.74 were only mock-ups and not the real thing.

As if. It was rather unusual for an SAS commanding officer to go anywhere without an armed escort, so he provided his own. The Hunter's quad ADEN cannon carried a hundred-and-fifty shells, the projectiles of which each weighed two-hundred and twenty-nine grams, firing them at a rate of twenty-five a second, per gun. That meant that every second of firing meant that the Hunter fired a hundred shells, or twenty-three kilos of projectiles.

He was just considering cracking open a can of coke when, cruising at forty-thousand feet, five MiG-21s burst through the thin layer of cloud, needle-like, deadly in their elegance,

"_Unidentified aircraft, you will descend bearing one-seventy to Benghazi._" buzzed the radio.

Harry glared at the aircraft through his sun-visor. Libyan Air Force roundels.

"I am a civilian aircraft flying in international airspace. You have no right to force me out of my current course." he radioed back, after all, his Hawker Hunter was in a garish civilian paint-job, and officially was on the British civil register. They indeed had no right to force him from his current course.

"_You will obey orders or be shot down_." was the chilling reply.

Like hell he was.

"All forces, this is Hunter Golf-Papa-Oscar-Tango-Tango, three-fifty degrees north-west of Benghazi in International Airspace, I have been intercepted by five Fishbeds, requesting armed assistance." Harry barked, having gone onto a NATO channel with his radio.

That done, he slowly pushed the nose down and turned until his compass was pointing to one-seventy degrees. Glancing in his mirror, Harry checked that they were all following him down. Amateurs.

All hell let loose.

Harry jerked the release lever for his drop tanks and snapped the fighter onto its port wing-tip, slamming the stick back into his stomach, feeling the anti-G suit compressing his legs to hold off the blood-drain to his lower half. Even so, as turn tightened, he saw the grey tunnel narrowing his vision. He saw for a moment his drop-tanks tumbling in a shower of unburnt aviation fuel toward the sea tens of thousands of feet below.

A moment later, he was face-to-face with a MiG-21 at a closing speed of about eight-hundred knots. Safety off. The gyroscopic gunsight showed him the lead indicator for the aircraft that was on his radar. There was no lead indication. They were attacking head-on He squeezed off a half-second burst which ripped into the pointed nose-cone and the needle-like fuselage, demolishing the front end and injecting a large amount of lead into the engine, which promptly spat most of its internal mechanisms out of the exhaust before exploding.

Jerking the stick back into his stomach, Harry 'jumped' the Hunter over the burning wreckage, just as a hail of tracer went through where he had been, and a second MiG-21 overshot him. He identified the missiles on pylons as Sidewinder-copies, the AA-2 Atoll, a fairly poor weapon.

He didn't have a speed advantage, but he did have his own missiles. Flicking the switch to select missiles, Harry held down the arm button, receiving an intermittent buzz in his ear for a few seconds before it became a constant whine. He released the arm button and pressed the fire button, releasing one of the IRIS-T missiles, which were compatible with the Sidewinder pylons on the Hunter.

The missile flew straight up the tail-pipe of the MiG and detonated, blowing the entire aircraft in half. Harry snapped a photo with the gun-camera and pulled up. He had a third aircraft right on his tail. They rocketed upwards, side-by-side right up until he closed the throttle. The Hunter stalled, and began to yaw over to port, and just as it began to slip out of the sky, the MiG flew right into his gunsight. He couldn't miss the big delta wing, and again, with very little deflection required because of the shallow angle of attack, fired. The ADENs roared, tearing the starboard wing off, leaving the MiG tumbling out of the sky like a spinning sycamore seed.

Harry slammed the throttle open as he dived after the falling aircraft, pulling out as he spotted the pair of '21s who had been providing top cover. They were shooting downwards after him. Their speed and lack of manoeuvrability would be the death of them.

Pushing the stick over to port and pulling back on it hard, Harry executed a tight hundred-and-eighty degree turn and, after taking a moment to get the lead indicator on his reflector gunsight in the right position, fired the last of his shells into the rear of the second of the MiGs remaining. It blew up spectacularly as his shells hit the fuel tank in the fuselage's spine behind the cockpit, leaving nothing but fluttering debris.

The last MiG pulled up hard and put on full afterburner, which gave Harry a perfect target for another heat-seeking missile. But just as he got the whine and launched one of his three IRIS-T missiles, the Libyan cut his afterburner and launched a spread of chaff flares, diverting his missile.

Powering through the sky, well ahead of the Hunter, the MiG gained enough altitude and banked around to face his opponent, who was still climbing.

Harry's headset began to howl as it detected a radar lock on his aircraft. Throttling back, he watched the jet pipe temperature gauge drop, and as he saw a missile detach from the MiG, Harry turned hard to starboard. The AA-2 would try and automatically lead his turn, so when he suddenly slammed the stick over to port, it was suddenly going in the opposite direction to him. Harry knew from his reading that he had to just hold off the missile for twenty-one seconds from launch time and it would run out of rocket fuel and fall out of the sky.

When he spotted the streak of white behind him, he pulled the Hunter through a wide barrel-roll at full power which would hopefully interrupt the seeker's lock-on for long enough. And it did, suddenly the protesting screech in his ears went silent. He turned hard to chase after the MiG which was making another shallow turn to bring itself onto his tail.

Harry soon had lock-on and launched his penultimate weapon. The MiG jinked to port suddenly, followed by a hard turn to starboard and simultaneously dispensed flares. The combination broke his lock-on and locked the missile onto one of the flares, which it promptly blew up.

Then the MiG opened up on full afterburner, just in time to receive Harry's last IRIS-T up the jet-pipe.

* * *

Harry balanced the Hunter against the shockwave of the passing aircraft, making sure not to drop his can of coca-cola. He recognised a pair of Italian Air Force Eurofighters accompanied by a Panavia Tornado. Moments later another flight of aircraft screamed past, Hellenic Air Force Dassault Mirage 2000s accompanied by two carrier-launched USMC F/A-18 Hornets, which slowed and fell into formation on either side of him.

"_Where are those fuckers bud?_" asked a thick American accent.

"They decided that they were going to go somewhere else." Harry answered.

"_Viper Zero-Two, this is SAR from USS Truxton, we have debris on the surface._" interrupted another radio call.

"Like I said, they decided they were going to go somewhere else." Harry said with a hint of smugness.

* * *

"_-And today, while transiting international airspace between British Gibraltar and RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, an armed defence contracted Hawker Hunter was attacked by five supersonic interceptors of the Libyan Air Force. The pilot, who has been named as Colonel Hadrian Potter of the Parachute Regiment, a Gulf War, Bosnia, Ireland, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq veteran, piloting the obsolete Hunter, fought back. He became an ace, scoring five confirmed victories, evading missiles and cannon fire from the attacking MiGs._" the news reporter droned as a photo of the aircraft in question came up, blinding many viewers with its lurid paint-scheme.

Painted British Racing Green as a background colour, a band around the central fuselage was painted with the WWII camouflage colours and identification marks of JE-J, EN398, Air Vice Marshal Johnnie Johnson's thirteen-kill Spitfire. From where the camouflage ended to the tip of the tail and the jet-pipe, the Hunter was painted with cartoonish scantily-clad women in various erotic poses. The gun-ports were encircled with jets of flame, painted on artistically, while it was very noticeable that the nose cone was painted with the gaping maw of a wolf, red eyes... and a handlebar moustache.

"_Colonel Potter released the following statement upon his return. 'I would like to apologise to Mikoyan-Gurevich for spoiling one of their masterpieces of aircraft design, and apologise to the Libyan instructors for humiliating their pilots. Furthermore, I am sending a bill to Colonel Gaddafi to the tune of four heat-seeking missiles, six-hundred cannon rounds and two very expensive custom-made drop-tanks. Lastly, I would like to comment that Britain would be great if it could produce another aircraft as good as the Hunter again'. He was awarded the Bar to an earlier award of the Distinguished Flying Cross by Her Majesty upon his return to Britain._"

"Well mate, you did a real good job." drawled Jack Whitehill, a rough cockney-speaking Eastender who had served under Harry for a decade as an SAS NCO.

"I must admit it was a masterpiece of smugness." Harry chuckled, sipping at a bottle of beer.

"He meant the flying." countered Staff Sergeant Andrew McKay, one of two Staff Sergeants, both Scots, who had been through thick and thin with the Regiment and its commander.

"It was the most fun I've had in years, and I'll admit, the scariest." said Harry eventually; "On the ground, I know I'm dependant on myself, in the air I was dependant on an old airframe based on a design from the fifties. I didn't have a speed advantage, but I did have fire power and better handling."

"Well, here's to big guns and British engineering." cheered Whitehill, raising his bottle.

"And cannons based on a German design and German missiles." Harry added.


	16. A Pilot's Tale: Bringing Thunder- Viggen

**Late 2011, the Mediterranean**

Thirty-five year-old Hadrian Potter, current Officer Commanding of 22 SAS was bored. Again. It was the second time he was flying down the Mediterranean that year. The first time, flying his Hawker Hunter hadn't ended well. The Libyans had launched five aircraft to intercept him, resulting in a ferocious air-battle. This time, the Prime Minister wanted a reason to attack the Libyans, so he was flying an aircraft perfectly balanced for the job.

The SAAB Viggen carried an immensely powerful cannon, firing the same shells as the A-10 Thunderbolt II's GAU-8 Avenger, and his single, single-barrelled Oerliken cannon carried a hundred-and-fifty shells, the projectiles of which each weighed about four-hundred grams, firing them at a rate of twenty-three a second. That meant that every second of firing meant that the Viggen saturated the sky with over nine kilos of projectiles leaving the muzzle at approximately at two-thousand three-hundred miles an hour.

Under the wings were six pylons, carrying two Skyflash missiles and two IRIS-T missiles, and under the nose were two pylons carrying AMRAAM missiles, giving him a good mixture of different weapons for different situations. If he needed to blow something up that was over fifty miles away, he had the perfect equipment. Unfortunately, he couldn't just blow up the targets like that, he had to wait for them to attack.

He was just considering cracking open a can of coke when, cruising at fifty-thousand feet, he received a signal from Akrotiri. He switched on the transponder and sat back. It took ten minutes before the Libyans, having identified the same transponder code as had been on the Hunter which had torn through a flight of five MiG-21s, launched another interceptor force. This time, Harry had more height, he had a far faster and just as manoeuvrable aircraft.

Another five MiGs. Maybe they thought that had a chance of getting through him. Like hell they were.

"All forces, this is Viggen Golf-Oscar-Delta-Echo-Sierra, three-fifty degrees north-west of Benghazi in International Airspace, I have been intercepted by five Fishbeds, requesting armed assistance." Harry barked, having gone onto a NATO channel with his radio. Almost the exact same words as the previous time.

All hell let loose.

Harry jerked the release lever for his three-hundred and thirty Imperial Gallon drop-tank and pushed open the throttle. He pushed the stick forward, grimacing as he began to red-out. The only way to counter negative G was strangulation. Something he wasn't keen on happening to himself.

Diving straight at the MiG flight, he saw his drop-tank tumbling out of the sky. Harry smirked as one of the MiGs had to pull away to avoid it wiping him out. The closing speed of the two forces was somewhere in the region of Mach two-point-five. Harry had screamed straight through the sound-barrier, his turbofan pushing a good twenty-eight thousand pounds force of thrust on afterburner.

The lead MiG broke from the formation, just as Harry opened fire with the Oerliken, his shells harmlessly bespattering the sea tens of thousands of feet below. Making a slight adjustment to port, Harry watched the squirming line on his HUD, drawing one of the MiGs right into the circle at the end. He pushed the fire button again. The thirty-millimetre cannon rattled the aircraft as it spat its payload out of the muzzle.

Harry observed the first strike on the side of the pointed nose-cone, then more strikes followed, like stitches, the shells burst in a neat line along the fuselage, perforating it with holes. Then a flare of fire. Smoke. Debris. Harry was blinded for a second as, while looking in his mirror after shooting past the doomed aircraft, it suddenly spat out a load of debris and imploded, showering the sky with bits of old Russian aeroplane.

Firmly pulling the stick back into his stomach, Harry dragged the Viggen back up into a climb. He slammed the stick back for a moment, 'jumping' over the burning wreckage, just as fan of light from tracer fired by the twin-barrelled gun of a MiG went through where he had been, and a second MiG-21, the shooter, overshot him. And despite their last skirmish, the Libyans were still using the Sidewinder-copy AA-2 Atoll .

He didn't have a climb-rate advantage, but he did have an overall speed advantage, and his own missiles. Jerking the throttle open, he experienced the sensation that the god of fighter pilots, Adolf Galland, had described as 'though angels were pushing' as the Volvo turbofan exploded into life.

Flicking the switch to select the missile systems, Harry flicked his gaze to the port side of his canopy as a MiG drew level with him, and slammed the stick over to port and jerking back for a moment, before dragging it back to starboard. Weaving backwards and forwards across each-other, the two struggled to gain the tail of the other, until Harry suddenly cut the throttle. As they had been climbing nearly vertically, he was suddenly losing speed, and the MiG streaked past.

He held down the arm button and selected a Skyflash missile. After a few seconds of receiving an intermittent buzz in his ear,it became a constant whine. The MiG pilot suddenly knew he'd made a mistake. Harry was certain that all sorts of alerts were going on inside the Libyan's cockpit as he began furiously weaving, trying to break the Viggen's lock. Harry had slammed open the throttle, and was also weaving, stood right on the tail of the MiG.

Releasing the arm button, Harry stabbed his thumb down on the fire button, just as the whine went back to the buzz. He'd lost the lock and launched the missile simultaneously. The missile dropped from the underside of the Viggen before its rocket motor engaged. It wasn't over. Harry had upgraded the avionics to integrate a helmet-control system, and using the monocle over his right eye, slewed the missile around, racing it towards his target.

The missile flew straight up the tail-pipe of the MiG and detonated, ripping the airframe in half. Jerking forward on the stick to miss the largest intact parts, the wings, which hurtled past his canopy, Harry banked to port. He quickly made sure that the gun-camera was working, having turned it on the moment that the Libyans arrived. A howl in his ear alerted him to the fact that he had a third aircraft right on his tail.

Slamming the stick over, he jerked back the throttle, sliding the tail over in a hammerhead maneuver. The MiG couldn't follow as easily. Opening the throttle, Harry dived away, accelerating past the sound barrier in his near-vertical descent. Easing out as he caught onto the tail of one of the MiGs who sat back and waited for one of their compatriots to destroy him, Harry was pleased to see the pilot open up onto full afterburner.

They rocketed upwards, side-by-side right up until he closed the throttle. The Viggen stalled, and began to yaw over to port, and just as it began to slip out of the sky, the MiG flew right into his gunsight. He couldn't miss the big delta wing, and again, with very little deflection required because of the shallow angle of attack, fired. The Oerliken roared, tearing the starboard wing off, leaving the MiG tumbling out of the sky like a spinning sycamore seed.

Harry slammed the throttle open as he dived after the falling aircraft, pulling out as he spotted the pair of '21s who had been sat, high up, hoping that the others would finish him off. They were sat in a neat formation on his tail, side by side, rocketing downwards after him. Their speed and lack of manoeuvrability would be the death of them.

Pushing the stick over to port and pulling back on it hard, Harry executed a tight hundred-and-eighty degree turn and, after hastily pulling the aircraft back to get the lead indicator on his reflector gunsight in the right position, fired a long burst. The first shell hit the MiG in the centre of the wing, exposing much of the internal mechanics, but the rest fell behind. Well-spooked and damaged, the fighter rolled over, dodging a second spray of tracer.

His own ever-increasing speed was nearly his downfall. The damaged MiG, trailing smoke, pulled around hard, but he'd failed to see the second approaching from a near vertical angle, nearly straight into the path of it. But he'd suddenly banked to starboard when he saw the needle-like fuselage race past, vertically.

Selecting the Sidewinder pylons carrying the German fire-and-forget heat-seeking IRIS-T missiles, he tried to fix both aircraft in the fire-control radar. They weren't having it, and began furiously tacking to evade the marauding SAAB. Harry scowled as the two weaved around him, unable to break the stalemate.

"_Rapier One, this the Liverpool, we are one-hundred miles to your west, permission to access the data link and upload radar data from ARTISAN._" buzzed Harry's radio, distracting him for a moment. Jabbing a series of keys on the bottom of the radar screen beyond the stick of the Saab, the screen suddenly lit up with radar reports.

Harry grinned a predatory grin, ready to open fire, when suddenly, both MiGs decelerated, idling their engines and dropping out of the sky. Harry pulled back on the stick, half-looping into an inverted dive after them. He had lock on both of them. Selecting IRIS-T, he pressed the fire button for two seconds, and watched as two radar reports separated from the one he knew was himself. He cursed as both missiles changed their lock-on to the damaged aircraft and ignored the other one.

It did however mean that the Mediterranean would be getting another wreck. Flashing past the fluttering, flaming wreckage in pursuit of the last enemy.

"_Rapier One, Rapier One, contacts have just appeared. You're on the very edge of our radar and they are five miles south, speed is eight-hundred and fifty knots, contacts, five, height, thirty-five thousand._" Liverpool alerted him. Then a pause before another message came through; "_Rapier One, correction, add two contacts, fifteen-hundred knots at sixty-thousand feet. Same direction, damn, add three contacts, same direction, one-thousand one-hundred knots, height, forty-five thousand feet, closing from the south._"

Harry was going to get the last MiG. A burst of Oerliken finished it off, but already, he was calculating. He had under twenty seconds before the slowest moving of the contacts would be on top of him. Fuck.

"Roger."

He cut the link with HMS Liverpool and turned on his tail-chase radar, which lit up with ten reports. Already, he had a radar lock incoming. The jamming system was working overtime to prevent the lock-on. Evaluating his situation, it looked grim. It had taken longer than he had the last time to get assistance, he had three missiles left. He'd fired a hundred-and-thirteen shells according to his computer, leaving just thirty-seven.

Launching his three remaining missiles, one Skyflash and two AMRAAM, Harry opened the throttle. His only hope was to survive until relief arrived. Relief, he'd been assured, would be expecting the order to scramble. The AMRAAM was a fire-and-forget missile, requiring no input from the beleaguered pilot. The missiles left the pylon, slewed around and raced for the highest targets, sending back the data to the cockpit including image footage.

The Skyflash was similar, it needed little input from Harry and simply followed the data from the tail-chase radar. Three kills later and it was only seven to one, instead of ten to one. Turning into the centre of the formation as they closed up, trying to trap him from above and below, Harry watched as a Mirage F1 was wiped out by the falling debris of what he thought was a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25, if his identification of the wing silhouette was right. Then a second tumbling fireball passed him. It looked like the top of their flanking move was no longer going to be of use.

However, he had to deal with one more MiG-25 above him, the remaining Dassault Mirage F1 at his height and four Sukhoi Su-24s below, one of them having been destroyed. He'd take his luck with the analogue-systems and no cannon of the MiG-25. Harry pulled back, hard, pushing the throttle to full afterburner. Turning the autopilot on, he slaved it to the radar, which quickly gained a lock on the MiG-25. It would mean he could concentrate on small moves to allow minimal cannon fire to destroy his target, and leave some shells for trying to get rid of the Mirage.

Forty-five thousand feet. Climbing. Closing speed with the Foxbat was about two-thousand three-hundred miles per hour. Climb rate was... a lot. The closing speed meant that the HUD's lead computer was of absolutely no use. It was simply too fast for the small screen to display the distance. Harry made a guess, stabbed the fire button with his thumb, releasing it as soon as he'd depressed it. One shell left the muzzle and slapped into the belly of the MiG, dead centre.

Harry pulled back on the stick, completing what was in effect an Immelmann. He stayed inverted though, watching the MiG. He was disappointed, but not particularly surprised that the one shell had done nothing. Suddenly the aircraft seemed to droop, and the canopy burst off, then a flare of fire and the rocket on the ejector seat fired, launching the pilot out of the cockpit. The empty aircraft began to sink downwards, then suddenly, the wings folded upwards, 'clapping' together. The fuselage spun, out of control, towards the sea, sixty-thousand feet below.

"_Jackdaw flight, rolling in._"

The much-awaited relief had arrived.

Harry wasn't finished. His tail-chase radar had picked up the Mirage and was constantly jamming the lock-on. He pulled back on the stick, going into an inverted dive. Building up speed, he shot through a formation of three Eurofighters who were circling in, closing on the Mirage, which had turned away when the Eurofighters had arrived. At a shallow angle as both dived through Mach Two, Harry fired. The last shells bespattered the Mirage, ripping it apart. When going at high speed, the stress on the airframe was so much more, that when the slightest impact occurs, it can be devastating. Thirty-six shells, each weighing four-hundred grams, going at the same speed as the Viggen plus the muzzle velocity of two-thousand three-hundred miles an hour shredded his target.

"You bastards better have a good excuse for taking this long." Harry growled over the radio.

"_We do._" was the brief reply from a feminine voice Harry recognised well. After all, whenever they weren't on duty and were in the same part of the world, they shared a bed; "_Status?_"

"A bit miffed, and in need of some fuel, though the plane has enough, and lacking in any armament." Harry's flippant response came across the radio a moment later.

Glancing at the fuel gauge, he was about three-hundred and twenty miles from anywhere (Malta on one side and Crete on the other), but the closest military airbase was actually Sicily, and Sigonella Naval Air Station. He had just enough fuel to get there, and it would probably be en-route for the inevitable wave of offence against Libya.

"Going to sunny Italy. Ciao for now Amy." he added, flipping the Viggen around.


	17. Line of Artorius the Potter: The Saxon

Cedric the Saxon finished his last evening patrol of the walls of Caereryr Castle, deep in the wild valleys and mountains of Wales, the last of the great Roman forts, around which, several further fortresses had been built, a Norman stone motte-and-bailey, then a huge medieval fortress and finally the artillery bastions of a Tudor fort.

It had been his home for fifteen-hundred years. His prison. He should never have crossed Lucius Artorius Castus, Arthur the Potter. It had been a mistake. Arthur could have claimed his life, but ensorcelled him to the bloodline of his own family. Bound, eternally. A curse, to see the world change before his eyes, bound within the curtain walls, unable to change anything himself. It was worse than an honourable death at the end of a sword. And yet, in years more recent, he had not been detested by the Potters, not an enemy. He had grown rather fond of some of them, no more than James, and his consort, Lillian.

Stepping into his study, he ran his hand down the shaft of a double-bladed battle axe, mounted on an elegant stand he'd carved centuries before in his spare time. It stood next to the aged colours of the Sixth Legion, which leaned against the wall in the corner of the room.

Cedric was physically a huge, bear-like man, with long, dirty-blond hair and a full beard with a few locks plaited, including the ends of his moustache. When doing his duties around the estate, he wore simple leather boots, nearly knee-length, loose cotton breeches and a wine-red tunic, with a seax short sword thrust through his belt.

However, stood on a stand in the shape of a man was a set of padded dragon-leather armour with several chainmail pieces laid over it and a wine-red robe woven with Saxon runes for protection, and a Saxon broadsword lay against the door, not used as anything more than a fire poker for many a year.

Settling back in a chair, he was just reaching for a bottle of mead when two of three simple crystal panes set in a stone square on a shelf shattered suddenly. They indicated the life signs of two of the last three Potters had been extinguished, and suddenly, most of the bindings on him dissolved. The last of his charges was defenceless, under-age, and it was to him that the burden of defending the family was laid.

Cedric contemplated for a few seconds simply leaving. A thousand years in a magically-saturated environment had lent him some magic of his own, he'd learnt to manipulate it. He could go anywhere in the world... a world he didn't know. He stood up, and with a simple gesture, utilised a switching spell. The air around his body was suddenly switched with dragon's leather and chainmail.

Shaking loose the mental cobwebs, he picked up his sword, tying the belt about his waist, before hefting the axe in one hand. He smiled. It was a thin, unpleasant smile. Then he vanished in a burst of grey smoke.

* * *

Long strides took him down the village road. Brushing aside the wards on the house like dust from a piece of furniture, Cedric spun around to see a small, pudgy boy, not a man by his standards. The figure was trying to sneak away from the property, so he slammed the axe into a nearby fence post and reached into a pouch.

His fingers came into contact with a strip of leather with a heavy weighted end. A bolas. Swinging it easily around his head, he hurled it with deadly accuracy. The metal weight dealt a dull blow to the back of Cedric's target's head. A second gesture from his hand wrapped the unconscious person in ropes, to be dealt with later.

The door was already blasted apart by an explosion. James Potter lay dead at the foot of the stairs, a bloodstained arming sword in one hand and a wand in the other, the bottom of the house a battlefield, torn apart by spells, conjurations, transfigurations. With a respectful nod, Cedric closed his eyes and continued on up the stairs. Stepping over what looked like a disgarded robe to find Lily dead, eyes closed as if asleep. Clutched in one hand was a ritual athame and the other hand had a long, shallow cut along the palm.

Blood magic. Not a subject he knew much about as he had no magic of his own in his blood. Something he'd have to change, Cedric amended as he approached the crib. With a freshly-bleeding scar, the youngest was still alive.

"Elf!" Cedric barked.

The Potter elves were the strongest of their kind, well-bred, like dwarfism-affected humans, but with better coordination. He wasn't surprised any more when they suddenly appeared with a bang.

"Sir?" asked the elf who appeared, clad in a long forest-green tunic.

"Take Hadrian to the castle. Kill anyone who threatens him." Cedric ordered before turning to face the discarded robe... with a wand lying by it.

Not Lily's.

He drove one of the points of the battleaxe's heads into the wand as he stepped over it and strode down the stairs. He intended to have a nice little discussion with the individual he'd incapacitated outside.

* * *

Sirius arrived in a gunshot sound to the sound of screams. Dashing forward, he found a huge bearlike man bending Peter, the traitor, over a tree stump while hefting his axe.

"Black, oathsworn son of the Potters." Cedric greeted him.

"Cedric." Sirius replied, holding his wand in a loose grip, ready to loose a vicious cutting curse. He'd always been more wary of the Potter's sinister manservant than James. "If I find you had anything to do with this and hurt my godson, then by all that's unholy I'll-"

"I cannot harm a member of Artorius the Potter's bloodline." growled the Saxon; "I'm about to kill one of your friends. I think you should watch."

"He betrayed them willingly?" asked Sirius.

"Yes. Led his master right to their door." Cedric replied; "Luckily their spawn's alive."

"Then... just do it. But where is my godson?" Sirius requested.

"In my custody Black." said Cedric, planting Pettigrew's face into the stump with one boot as he delivered a blow to his neck with the axe, severing it smoothly.

Then there was a swish, indicating displaced air as a portkey delivered another visitor. This time, an even bigger figure, tightly curled black hair all over his head.

"Hagrid! What the hell are you doing here!" demanded Sirius.

"Dumbledore told me tha' Lily an' James'd been killed. 's it true?" asked Hagrid.

"Yes." Sirius nodded soberly; "The rat betrayed them. Voldemort came. Harry's alive."

"Where? Dumbledore told me ta take 'im to 'is aunt's house." said Hagrid, brightening up.

"He's in my custody." growled Cedric, fingering his bloody axe.

"Who're you?!" demanded Hagrid.

"Cedric, sworn bodyguard, manservant and attack dog to the Potter Family." Cedric responded; "Now go and tell your boss that if he wants Harry, he can come and get him himself."

"You're not going to give Harry to Dumbledore! You heard Hagrid, Harry's aunt! Petunia loathed Lily!" Sirius roared as soon as a portkey whisked Hagrid away.

"Calm yourself Black before my hand spasms with my axe in it." warned Cedric, silencing Sirius; "Of course I won't hand the scion to an outsider, but I want to know how this Dumbledore type knew about the attack. Then I can get on with my job of keeping the Potter Family alive."

He was once again fingering the haft of his bloody axe. If this Dumbledore got in his way, he'd kill him. And then train Hadrian to do the same to any obstacles. Some said he came from a long-gone era, which was true, and some disapproved of his methods, but they did produce results.


	18. Two Guys Fall Into a Pub

**October 1995, two years after Voldemort.**

Harry downed the last dregs of his first pint of cider of the night, his right hand reflexively falling to the hidden holster inside the belly-pocket of his khaki hoodie, the hood of which covered almost all of the defining features of his face. The door had swung open and old reflexes died hard.

He'd learnt during the hunt for Voldemort's Horcruxes that the only unfair advantage was the one you didn't have. So tucked into his pocket was a .45 Colt M1911, his old trusty which had seen him through hundreds of magical firefights. Tucked up each of his sleeves was a dagger for silent jobs and close combat.

It seemed that at least some of his paranoia with two years as an Auror Commandant effectively foisted on him without any consultation was going to pay off as a recognisable pale, slightly gaunt man walked in, platinum blond hair still insufferably slick and smart.

"Lord Black!" Malfoy exclaimed, seeing a signet ring on the man's hand which he'd been raised from birth to recognise, expecting it would be his on his seventeenth birthday.

"Great. Ferret." came the muffled retort from the hooded man whose head was now collapsed in his arms.

"Potter?" Malfoy asked.

"Look Malformed, if you're going to sit down and get drunk, just get on with it." Harry groaned, knowing that the overly curious RAF girls at the table a few yards away were probably still listening in, despite the fact that every time he came in and they tried to speak to him, his answers were generally ambiguous and monosyllabic.

Malfoy coloured, but quickly sat down at the table as Harry gestured for another round.

"And address me by any title unless it's one of your childish taunts, I'll chuck you in a nice cell for the night." Harry added.

"Frankly I'm surprised you haven't come up with an excuse to get me chucked away." Malfoy commented.

"I've kept an eye on you, but I don't put people away without trial. Nor do I follow egotistical megalomaniacs. Two differences between us. The third is you're blond and I'm not." drawled Harry.

"Low Potter, low." Malfoy replied, rolling his eyes. "So, what's the great and wonderful golden boy doing here."

"Trying to get drunk. Never works, I once downed two bottles of vodka and all I got was alcohol poisoning." grunted Harry irritably; "Drown one's sorrows in the bottle and wash the blood off one's hands with even more alcohol."

"I'll admit I was surprised when I found out about your job. I never took you for a suicidal idiot. An idiot yes." said Malfoy.

"Frankly I was both in school." Harry admitted; "But I was pretty much presented the job fait accompli."

"If the drunken wreck opposite me is the smug sanctimonious ass I remember, then frankly you should tell them to take their job and screw themselves with it." Malfoy advised, taking a swig of his cider, swilling it around his mouth for a moment before swallowing the unfamiliar alcohol.

"Maybe, but what else have I got, a meaningless earldom in the common world and a title which I hate amongst those 'in the know', do the maths." said Harry sourly; "And how can you tell if I'm a drunken wreck or not, you can't see my face as it's under the hood."

"I have seen photos of you." said Malfoy sarcastically as he saw his drinking partner draining his glass.

"Shut it Ferret." Harry growled with barely any venom as he slowly lowered the hood. Underneath, his raven hair was flecked with silver already, a long pale-pink scar ran across his right cheek from the corner of his mouth to his neck, grey bags hung under his eyes which were dull and lifeless.

"New scar Pothead?" asked Malfoy.

"Got it smacking down the new big bad before he could be anything more than a minor annoyance." said Harry dismissively, running a hand along his cheek, realising he really needed a shave.

"What happened to the Weaslette?" Malfoy enquired.

"Found her having a fling with three other men and then found she was drugging me. The Weasley family have her under house arrest." Harry shrugged; "I spend my days hunting down shit-heads who think they're the next Doctor Crippen, hiding in my manor and trying to get drunk."

"You know I almost prefer the sanctimonious git you were." Malfoy sighed; "Frankly, you look like shit."

"Thanks. And I seem to remember you were a total prick anyway." Harry said lazily; "Admittedly we were both naïve brats, I've learnt the hard way that the only people who can't betray you are your enemies."

"And that would account for the fact that the list of people who want to kill you could stretch around this building thrice?" said Malfoy sarcastically.

"Don't jinx my luck, nobody's tried to kill me in a record three days." replied Harry with a straight face.

That was when the door burst open, a masked man racing in brandishing a revolver.

"Well, fuck." Harry commented, unimpressed.

"THIS IS A ROBBERY, ON THE FLOOR ALL OF YOU. BARMAN, GIVE ME THE MONEY!" yelled the gun-wielding imbecile.

Harry just stood up and stared at him.

"YOU, ON THE FLOOR!" continued the guy with the gun.

"Put it away before I feed it to you." Harry replied acidly, flicking off the safety catch on his pistol.

Apparently that was enough to push the gunman over the edge as he fired twice at Harry. Stumbling back a pace, Harry drew his M1911 faster than the eye could see, falling into a Weaver Stance, right hand on the grip and trigger, left hand supporting and on the right hand. Right elbow almost completely straight, left elbow bent, facing the gunman with his left foot forward, balance on the front foot.

He fired twice, both rounds catching the gunman in the shoulder.

"And that's why you don't interrupt my drinking sessions." Harry said irritably, rolling the gunman on to his front to muffle the screams a bit and kick away the revolver; "And why not to rob a pub where a special branch copper is getting a drink. It almost always ends badly."

"How aren't you hurt." asked one of the RAF women who'd been at the next table.

"The combination of body-armour and the fact that you don't commit a crime with a handgun with a calibre which begins in anything less than a three including the word 'Magnum' or somewhere in the fours. He just did." he shrugged; "Ferret, could you go and get one of my minions, they're probably lazing around now that they know I'm off duty."

Malfoy, scowling at being called a ferret again, swept out.

"Oh, and you lot, don't go anywhere, I have no doubt they'll want your statements." Harry added, thumbing on the safety catch on his sidearm.

About twenty minutes later, the local police arrived in a parade of screaming cars, armed officers rushing in to find Harry sat at the table, unconcernedly drinking another pint of cider, no weapon visible, though the gunman, now unconscious from being kicked in the head, was lying face down on the floor, his gun a few feet away.

"Potter, you could have just taken the guy out for a 'discussion' you know." Malfoy commented.

"Too much effort. Anyway, weren't we discussing our screwed up lives, not this little irritation." Harry drawled, nodding disdainfully at the unconscious gunman.

"You mean I've got no life, my ex-fiancée was a dead fish in bed. You?" said Malfoy sarcastically.

"A whole load of psychological problems, the fact that the first of my last two girlfriends was the Weaselette who tried to drug me, the second was simply trying to get me to a suitably isolated location to kill me." yawned Harry; "Once this lot are done, I'll go and shout at my officers and crash at the manor tonight, head back to London for the week. Fuck it, you're right, twenty and I'm fucking burnt out. Retirement, here I come."

"You know I never found out what happened to my bastard of a father." commented Malfoy lightly.

"I'm fairly certain I killed him." Harry replied.

"I'll buy the next round of drinks." said Malfoy.

* * *

"Didn't you feel anything shooting a poor young man?" probed the defence barrister.

"Two times four pounds of pressure approximately applied to the trigger and medium recoil." Harry replied, rolling his eyes at the attempt at emotional blackmail; "And this 'poor young man' had just shot me, and is also several years older than me, make of it what you will."

He glanced at the area where the witnesses were sat, smirking as he saw that someone, probably Dennis Creevey had a number of people wearing black t-shirts with a cartoon outline of himself toting his pistol with the words emblazoned below it 'Do not kill him, it just makes him angry'. Amusingly, the RAF women, who had testified in his favour had then donned the t-shirts, probably at the behest of Dennis.

"No more questions."

Harry stepped back and watched as Malfoy testified in his favour, his amusement increasing when the defence lawyer asked the blond;

"What is your relationship with Inspector Potter?

"Sworn enemies." Malfoy said cheerfully; "Sworn enemies since we were eleven in '86. I'm fairly sure that he and all of his little minions will testify that we hate each-other's guts."

That five minutes after leaving the stand, Malfoy was wearing one of the t-shirts which he was considering passing a law to ban.


	19. Zero Fks Were Given

"What in the living fuck?!" exclaimed the tall, black-haired young man who looked to be in his late teens, standing with a similar-looking blond, a large, red-coloured bird of prey circling them.

"Language... fuckwit." replied the other.

"Seriously Caspar, have you read this shit?" demanded the first.

"Give me the damn thing then Harry." growled Caspar.

"I can only think of one way to reply. Fuck with their heads until they doubt their heads still exist."

* * *

Albus Dumbledore looked down on the combined upper years of Beauxbatons, Durmstrang and the entirety of the population of Hogwarts with his usual grandfatherly expression. However, inside, he was nervous. Very nervous. Harry Potter had been missing from his home since not a week after he'd been left there and now, thirteen years later, his name had emerged from the Goblet of Fire.

Fawkes had been able to use his unique brand of magic to follow a brief connection from the Goblet to Harry, but he neither knew where that was, nor whether the Potter Heir knew of magic. He could do nothing but await the return of Fawkes, his phoenix-

Dumbledore dived to one side as a large object manifested itself a few yards in front of him, making rapid progress towards his face. Looking back as the object smashed through the High Table, he was shocked to see that it was a gigantic ice-cube containing his familiar.

"**THAT WAS MERELY A WARNING. BEWARE OF ANGERING A HIGHER POWER!**" boomed a sepulchre voice, echoing through the silent Great Hall.

Then a small letter fluttered to the floor next to Dumbledore, who, shakily standing up, unfolded and read it twice before reading it a third time, aloud.

"Dear Chief-Mug-Master Dumbledore, before I come near your provincial little school and your so-called Triwizard Tournament, certain demands must be made. I require certain facilities to facilitate my participation, such as a stretch of land exactly one-and-a-half miles long, a hundred feet wide and perfectly flat and paved in the substance which will appear when you read this out loud." Dumbledore ducked as a black rock shot past his head; "I will also require that a space is laid out at one end of this paved strip, itself paved the same way, and it shall be four-hundred feet wide and four-hundred feet long. Yours insincerely, Hadrian James Potter."

"Just as arrogant-" Snape began to sneer before the black lump of what appeared to be rock levitated itself in the air and knocked him out by dropping itself on his hair.

* * *

It had taken two weeks, a significant amount of manpower which the Minister had been happy to provide, thinking it would get him on the good side of the 'Boy-Who-Lived'. Dumbledore wasn't sure that Harry Potter had a good side from what he'd experienced of him thus far. However, his demands had been fulfilled when an area of empty land a short distance from the castle on the far side of the complex from the Black Lake and the Forbidden Forest was levelled and, using magic, paved with the black substance.

The previous evening during supper, they'd received a missive that the fourth champion would be arriving sometime in the next twelve hours. At precisely zero-eight hundred hours, what appeared to be a tear in the very fabric of reality opened, a tall, handsome blond male with grey eyes, lazily ruffled hair and a careless air about him stepped through. What was noticeable was the long-bladed knife sheathed at his side, hanging from his belt by the temperate camouflage trousers and khaki figure-hugging t-shirt he was wearing.

"Who are you!" Dumbledore demanded, drawing his wand and sweeping across the Great Hall.

"Doctor Caspar Cain, PhD in Genetics from the University of San Francisco, also best friend of Doctor Hadrian Potter, PhD in Military History from the University of Cambridge. I'm afraid he's a bit delayed getting our headquarters from San Francisco and delivering it to here." Caspar replied in a lazy west coast drawl.

"What?" said a confused Dumbledore.

"Flying from San Fran all the way to Deer Lake in Newfoundland, then on to London, he should be here in a couple of hours, if not then he'll be dead which will be an inconvenience. I abandoned him in Newfoundland." explained Caspar; "By the way Champions, sorry but we're going to make you look like toddlers playing in a safari park full of hungry tigers."

"Who do you think you are, Yank filth-" sneered a platinum blond in green before he was interrupted by his golden plate turning into a large spider and attaching itself to his face.

"Right, I'm going to Edinburgh for the day, I need several pints of coffee, capiche? Hopefully I'll be back by the time my bastard of a business partner gets here." yawned Caspar before he tore another rip in reality and stepped through, closing it behind him before anyone could see what was on the other side.

* * *

"And that'll be him." Caspar commented casually, stepping through a rip in reality right behind the High Table where Dumbledore was sat. Everyone was looking at the ceiling as a mechanical roar sounded overhead.

"What's going on Doctor Cain?" asked the headmaster with a touch of worry as he stood up from his throne-like seat, seeing the young man looking unconcerned.

"You know we demanded you pave a mile-and-a-half of completely flat land?" he questioned, gesturing for Dumbledore to follow him out of the hall, which he did. "Well, it was an actual requirement, not just us fucking with your head, though we'll do plenty of that."

Ignoring Dumbledore's noise at his casual swearing, Caspar continued into an open courtyard, his long strides leading Dumbledore to look down to the paved land just as a sleek form came down towards it. Painted with silver, dark-blue and white, the Lockheed Super Constellation touched down with the slightest puff of smoke from the tyres, the nose held high until the speed bled away. Gracefully sinking the nose wheel to the tarmac, it rolled down the runway until it reached the end with the four-hundred feet square area of tarmac set to one side.

Reaching the end, the aircraft turned off and rolled onto the 'stand', turning around to face back towards the runway. Then, the big radial engines shut down and the propellers ran down, eventually ceasing spinning. Caspar produced a small model car and threw it to the ground several yards away where it immediately grew into a full-sized open-top Land Rover.

"Come on, it is polite to greet your guests." Caspar chided, climbing into the driving seat.

Casting a doubtful look at the car, Dumbledore climbed in, and a moment later it was racing across the grassy grounds of the castle down to where the Lockheed was parked up. The blond leapt out as soon as they were alongside, conjuring a staircase to the rear of the aircraft.

Moulding itself from metal forming out of nothingness, he calmly strode up the stairs with Dumbledore following hesitantly. As they reached the top, the door was opened, a tall, similarly well-built young man, evidently Harry Potter given the recognisable eyes, the crow's nest of jet-black hair and easygoing grin.

"Headmaster Dumbledore, do come aboard." greeted Harry.

"I presume you're Doctor Potter?" asked Dumbledore.

"Call me Harry, as this isn't an official educational function I don't use." he replied, gesturing for the aged wizard and Caspar to come on board.

The rearmost compartment, twenty feet of the aircraft, was all bare metal with two cars strapped down on twenty-foot deep shelves, one on top of the other. The top one was Caspar's 'murdered out' 2003 Brabus E-Class V12 and the second one, underneath the shelf was Harry's equally 'murdered out' 2003 Ascari KZ1. Tuned heavily and bored out to five-and-a-half litres, which when running on a cocktail of ethanol and petrol, pumped out something in the region of eight or nine-hundred brake-horsepower.

Ducking through a doorway on the port side of the aircraft, he passed four doors, occupying around thirty feet of the aircraft before walking straight through a combination dining-room and kitchen which was around twenty feet long, to a comfortable sitting-room and library combination, with bookcases lining the walls where there weren't portholes. The portholes themselves were framed by Arts and Crafts curtains, a hi-fi sat in one corner with speakers on stands in the two corners not occupied by the hi-fi or the door. On top of the speakers were antique-style table lamps, casting a warm glow on the room. Finally, a deep Persian rug, sewn in dark-reds and other rich colours, was laid across the floor.

"The ceiling's lower here because in the car bay we lowered the floor right down." Caspar explained as Dumbledore stepped through the door; "The cabin is over eighty feet long, but we removed the baggage hold from the back and pushed the cars as far back as they go, installed three bedrooms and a bathroom, as well as the kitchen-dining room which left us with enough room for this sitting room."

"I admit that after many years of looking after teenagers, I had never expected anything less than chaos." chuckled Dumbledore genially.

"Do sit down." Harry said, dropping into one of the comfortable armchairs; "Now, much as I'm pleased to be back in England for the first time since I last dropped in for my doctoral graduation, but I'd very much like to know why my name supposedly came out of your Goblet of Fire."

"May I in return ask some questions, and get answers provided it isn't too personal?" asked Dumbledore.

"Naturally." replied Harry.

"Well, as to how your name came out of the Goblet of Fire, we believe simply someone placed your name in the Goblet and used a confundus charm to make it forget any age limit, and add a second school." Dumbledore explained; "How did you come to be in both the muggle world and wizarding world?"

"Hmm... this dates back to when I was in an orphanage in Cornwall, I found a book full of Druidic magic in an abandoned croft when I got lost during a storm. I began practising magic back then with no foci, or rudimentary ones. I also found I had a minor Metamorphmagus talent, so I saved up enough to buy a thirty-pound antique chair that was smashed up, I repaired it with magic, sold it for two-hundred. Bought, repaired, sold. I made massive amounts restoring cars that way." said Harry; "From early on, I had a pretty good mind, to the extent that I was bored with the stuff taught to ten year-old kids when I was six, so I started teaching myself from books. I entered high school a year early when I was ten and graduated six weeks before that term started... So, over the next year I alternated between studying for A-levels and writing the thesis for my Doctorate. A-levels are like NEWT exams, except they're useful. A-levels aged eleven and I did a fast two-year degree course which ended a year ago. Three weeks later and the council judging my viva-voce passed me and I was Doctor Potter."

"That's a rather thin description of his life." Caspar added helpfully; "He built his first ultra-light aeroplane, that's basically a big, rigid bit of cloth supporting a chair with an engine and propeller, aged six. He built a full-size glider aged eight and began buying full-scale aeroplanes aged nine. I met him in Las Vegas during an race when he beat me and took my car, and then again in San Fran when I beat him back. This was when we were eight, and it was legal because we weren't driving on the roads. We decided after a couple more races that we may as-well cooperate, and thus we became business partners."

"So anyway, I have educational titles, and I also have a pilot's license and driver's license confirming I am eighteen, though due to my constant abusing of the Timeturner I built, I'm probably about sixteen." Harry surmised; "I race fast cars, fast aeroplanes and live in the fast lane."

Dumbledore just looked confused.

* * *

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have the pleasure of-" Dumbledore began at lunchtime.

"Fucking hell, do you want to light this dump up like fucking Chernobyl. That level of radiation is nearly the same as my nuclear microwave makes." drawled a thick American accent.

"I have a degree in nuclear physics you imbecile. Of course I'm not going to make like Chernobyl and turn everything sickly green, that would just be... not as awesome as using cruise missiles for salmon fishing." replied another, equally thick American accent; "I wonder if we could get enough plutonium two-four-one to make a nuclear reactor. I know the FBI kind-of got pissed off when they found me making a nuke for self-defence."

"You know if they finally get around to building that nuclear waste bunker one-sixty klicks from Vegas, we could just nick it all and build ourselves a nuclear reactor for 'green energy and medical research only'." Caspar mused as they strolled in, Harry with his head buried in a book.

"Nah, fucking greenies won't let them. What the hell is wrong with securely storing just some slightly extremely toxic metals under a bit of desert. It's not like anyone will miss Nevada if it gets wiped out in a massive nuclear fission and a loud orange-coloured bomb-sound." Harry stated; "Remember, we'd need plutonium two-three-nine for nukes, and mixed-oxide fuel can only be used once or twice for a nuclear reactor."

"Where do we get enough weapons-grade plutonium then?" asked Caspar.

"Russia?" said Harry.

"Nah, they haven't liked us since we bought those submarines and then stripped out all of their surveillance equipment." Caspar shook his head; "And I think they think we had something to do with sinking that arms shipment to the FARC guerillas, which is patent nonsense because we were in Monaco at the time."

"What about North Korea? Would they be willing to lend us some weapons-grade plutonium?" Harry commented.

"Nah, midgets with bad tempers. Look at Kim Jong very-il." Caspar disagreed; "Look, brats."

"Hell no, I thought this was some kind of fucking university, not infant school." cursed Harry, looking up from his book; "You utter pillock, you abandoned me in Newfoundland and fucked off. You know I _will_ paint your car pink and replace the brake-pads with Semtex."

"Bitch please, if I died every time you tell me you're going to kill me I would... be dead?" said Caspar; "Anyway, hoe before bro and she was _hot_."

"I'm going to Germany, the Luftwaffe had a fuck-load of MiGs in storage from the Soviet era and I bought the lot." Harry stated before vanishing.

"Sorry kids, he thinks anyone without a degree is either a squalling brat or an uneducated moron." Caspar commented to the silent hall; "At least you can live happily knowing that this place will soon have the largest air force in Britain protecting it, now I've got to chase the pillock across most of Eastern fucking Europe. Happy days!"

"Filthy-" began pompous-slicked-back-imbecile.

Caspar didn't even look at him as he picked up an empty plate and hurled it at him like a frisbee.

"Fucking insult to purebloods." Caspar replied; "Yep, that's right, pureblood and proud, but I live in the non-magical world, don't insult first-generations and don't inbreed until I've got a foot sticking out of my face."

He then vanished.

* * *

"Right, let's play a game of top trumps." Harry said sarcastically; "Khatchurov R-35, maximum diameter is nine-hundred-and-eight millimetres, length is four-nine-nine-one millimetres, weighing one-thousand nine-hundred and thirty kilos. The General Electric J79, maximum diameter is nine-hundred and seventy-five millimetres, length is five-three-zero-three millimetres, weighing in at one-thousand seven-hundred and fifty kilograms. It won't fucking work!"

"Do you know what this is?" Caspar asked, ignoring the students as he conjured a whiteboard and pen, quickly sketching what was obviously a fireball; "This is you trusting Soviet crap and dying in a massive fireball which will severely inconvenience me with such questions as 'why did the crash investigators find missiles on board'."

"I admit Soviet engineering leaves a bit to be desired." Harry commented.

"Fuck, don't you remember when you had to eject from that MiG-21 because it was intent on killing your pansy white ass." groaned Caspar.

"You're white." riposted Harry.

"RACIST!" Caspar yelled.

"Oh fuck off." he replied easily; "Actually wouldn't the English Electric Lightning's Rolls-Royce Avon be a better fit... It's three-two-zero-zero long and nine-one-seven in diameter. Weighs thirteen-ten kilos."

"Maybe... it's a bit short, like seventeen-ninety-one mils to short. That's six feet. I suppose we could add some more fuel, or maybe more ammunition for the twenty-three mil." Caspar mused; "How many airframes did the Germans sell you? Or how many do you have?"

"MiG-23s, two of the UB two-seater, and four of the ML dog-fighter." Harry answered; "How long should it take to get these airworthy?"

"Probably about five-hundred man-hours. The Comittee Against Aviation might not like you though." said Caspar thoughtfully, idly sketching plans on the end of the table they'd commandeered. Using the tip of his combat knife.

Harry reached into the left pocket of his combat trousers, removing a pile of three books, half of a motorbike engine, a cavalry sabre before he finally pulled out a laptop and a bottle of schnapps which Caspar snatched, along with half of a platter of sausages.

"Only fifty-percent alcohol by volume, I'm disappointed." he sighed, pouring it over the purloined sausages; "Couldn't you get some Everclear? We used to have a load and then you put all of it into our Starfighter. Waste of good booze and honestly, I didn't even feel slightly drunk from standing near the engine exhaust."

"It was an interesting experiment." Harry shrugged; "Have you got your work piece?"

"Sig Sauer P226 in nine mil." Caspar nodded.

"Pansy pistol, .460 Rowland M1911's where it's at." replied Harry; "Just don't Al Capone anyone while we're in Britain, 'cos they don't like teenagers packing."

"Yeah yeah, I care too." said Caspar sarcastically as he grabbed two slices of toast, buttered them, added a healthy splash of schnapps to the toast, added bacon, Schnapps, fried egg, schnapps, bacon, schnapps. "Can you get me six J79s in working condition?"

"Elementary." Harry smirked, stealing back his depleted schnapps, taking a swig straight from the bottle; "First I was thinking that this evening, we could head down to London, unfortunately, the Limelight club closed, but there's a place called Fabric which is pretty well-rated. That reminds me, I bought a Gazelle and I was scouting out the locality when I encountered some cute 'lil lizards."

"Sweet." Caspar replied; "Reminds me, I found this in one of the corridors."

He produced a dark-green object, roughly diamond-shaped and made of dozens of layers.

"This is keratin. Not the right size, shape or colouring to be dragon." stated Harry.

"DUMBLEDORE!" Caspar yelled, looking up at the high table; "Have you had a basilisk wandering around this school any time recently, only I've found a scale from one."

"Yes, sealed in a chamber under a second-floor bathroom with Parseltongue wards." Dumbledore admitted.

"What d'you think?" asked Caspar, turning to Harry.

"Hell yes, let's go." Harry replied, before they slipped out.

* * *

The whole hall was quiet, Dumbledore looked depressed. The young men had been missing for two days, and as they'd sealed the chamber behind them, he couldn't follow them.

"This stupid fuck tells me that I 'cannot have a sword because I am only eight'. Who the fuck did he think he was?" drawled an arrogant-sounding voice.

The Great Hall's doors burst open, nearly coming off their hinges as Harry and Caspar strolled in, wearing their usual combat boots, cargo trousers, t-shirts. However, both were also wearing dark-green, shiny leather jackets obviously made from the finer sections of the hide of a large reptile, as well as aviator shades. Caspar had a long tube on his back with a bell-end, wood held to it with bands of metal and a pistol grip and trigger just before the end of the tube. Harry was carrying a large, matte-black sniper rifle, a semi-automatic fifty-calibre OSV-96.

"I mean, what the fuck? They didn't have a problem with me owning a San Francisco penthouse aged seven, and I built bombs there until I was eleven and they told me it would be gross negligence to let me continue. I don't know why the FBI pillock thought it was dangerous, bombs don't kill people, people kill people with bombs." Harry ranted; "Yeah, sure, we shouldn't let everyone get their grubby paws on explosives, but I'm perfectly trustworthy."

"Right..." Caspar said disbelievingly.

"Caspar, Harry, what happened?" demanded Dumbledore as he moved down the Great Hall with surprising alacrity as one of the boys produced a bottle of whisky.

"Yo, I blew the basilisk pen up and trapped it under some rocks, Harry shot it dead." drawled the blond; "Now I have a nice new jacket. Thanks old man."

"And we celebrated by going to Russia, getting drunk and stealing a retired nuclear submarine, now we have a ready-made reactor which only needs a bit of tweaking to produce weapons-grade plutonium!" Harry added, grinning widely as he took a swig of the whisky and passed it to his 'bro'.

"WHAT!" screamed a bushy-haired girl in robes with red-and-gold piping.

"We, Harry and I, stole a disused nuclear submarine, with its reactor still inside." Caspar repeated slowly; "We now make weapons-grade plutonium."

"Damn straight." Harry agreed, lighting a cigar.

"You know, if I realised Europe was this much fun, I'd have come over here years ago." stated Caspar, sliding off his aviators for a moment before hastily replacing them; "Fuuuuck! Maybe having a hangover was a bad idea."

"Once we've got enough weapons-grade plutonium, what are we going to do with it?" asked Harry.

"Bomb someone... but who is the question." Caspar replied.

"Belgium." Harry said firmly.

"Why not the French?" enquired Caspar.

"The Belgians are so bloody passive, it's fucking infuriating." Harry explained; "Want a cigar?"

"Go ahead. Why don't we bomb the Buddhists, they're so tranquil and peaceful, surely that's far more infuriating." said the blond, accepting an offered cigar.

"Scientology groupies?" Harry then added.

"Hmm... they'd probably try and explain it away. The Latter-Day Saints would just call it an opportunity for reincarnation. What about Australia?"

"Nah, they'd use it as an excuse for a barbecue." said Harry, shaking his head.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, you do realise the first task of the Tournament is tomorrow?" interrupted Dumbledore as the conversation followed a path around as straight as an Alpine road.

"Thanks Gandalf." said Caspar; "By the way bro, I forgot to ask, what was it you graffitied on the other submarine we decided not to steal?"

"Oh, I listed all the faults in the base's security, and then added that it was a futile effort trying to keep someone of our intellect out." Harry stated; "And I also gave them our PO box address."

"Damn, I didn't think we were just baiting the Russians. I wanted to build a nuclear bomb you bastard." Caspar complained, poking him with the hot end of his cigar.

"I'm still going to blackmail them for a few things before I give them the submarine back." replied Harry; "Actually, remember a couple of years ago when we were in St. Petersburg and drunk and we got into the airbase and glued all the aircraft to the tarmac, damn that was fun."

"Didn't we also draw a gigantic dick on the hanger roof and leave our PO box address that time?" asked Caspar; "I think we'll receive more than a 'strongly worded letter' requesting we cease and desist. By the way, where did you put the submarine and have you got me my J79 jets?"

"I put the jets in my backpack and I have the submarine in my pocket." Harry answered, removing a harmonica-sized box with a thin strip of glass in the top which showed a rather rusty-looking submarine lying on a velvet cushion. He was contemplating giving it back to the Russians in that form.

"Fuck, I haven't had enough coffee for this shit." Caspar groaned; "We can start preparing for the tournament tomorrow, but I'm thinking of doing up this sub and giving it to them in museum condition. Set up a coms system playing the trolling music constantly, and instead of the traditional aircraft's shark-faced nose, troll-faced submarine bow?"

"I'm reminded suddenly that it would be far easier to shoot you than bother tolerating your continued existence." Harry stated, fingering one of the guns he was packing, a .460 M1911 on his right hip.

"Black Belt Judoka, draw and I'll fuck up your ugly face with judo." replied Caspar as they turned to leave.

"Fucking pansy-ass mother-fucker." replied Harry; "First-grade expert Krav Maga practitioner, and I will eat my fucking hat if I don't become a master by the time I'm thirty. Hey, come on bro, I was thinking of building us a couple of cruise missiles, want to join me?"

"I'll make the rocket motor and the shell of the missiles, you handle the guidance and the warhead." Caspar instructed, their voices echoing back into the silent Great Hall.

* * *

"Sup." Caspar said as he and Harry strolled into the Champions' Tent on the day of the First Task.

"This is a champions and Ministry of Magic staff only area." said the severe-looking man with a small moustache, glaring at the blond.

"You hear that?" asked Caspar, cocking his head to one side; "That's the sound of me giving zero fucks."

"Bask in my presence." Harry ordered as he swept in; "Yo, Cassie, you set our shit up?"

"And the backup plan just in case shit goes down." Caspar nodded, thinking of the small cruise missile a few miles away, aimed at the arena.

"Gentlemen, ladies-" began a rather overweight man in garish robes.

"Yo, Harry, you seen the news, someone made off with a Russian nuclear submarine, apparently they're investigating." Caspar interrupted him, producing a rolled-up newspaper.

"Holy fucking shit- wait, we stole it. Fuck-wits." Harry sniggered.

"Good thing is, they're being pressured to dispose of nuclear material instead of leaving it all radioactive in the environment. A bit of egg-on-face when the internationals found out it was still fuelled." continued Caspar.

"Boom baby."

"Ladies and gentlemen!" said the man again, a bit affronted as he proffered a purple silk bag; "In this are small likenesses of what you will face in this task. Ladies first, Miss Delacour."

Looking awfully nervous, she pulled out an animated miniature of the Swedish Short-snout dragon, followed by Krum with the Chinese Fireball and Diggory the Welsh Green. Harry reached in and withdrew a larger model of a black-scaled dragon with bronze-coloured spikes on its tail.

"Now, Mr. Potter, you missed the weighing of the wands, so we don't know if it's in working condition-" began the same imbecile who Harry was contemplating shooting.

"Oh, I assure you it works, as a number of good-looking women can attest to." he replied with a deadpan look; "But I don't use one of your funny little sticks for magic. Actually, I don't really use magic much, it's an excuse for laziness and close-mindedness, anyway, can we get on with this idiotic task so I can go back to committing international crime and get around to playing with my jets? By the way Caspar, after the task, can you turn the dragon's body into a couple of jackets, maybe some boots, and I want the blood to experiment with."

"Fuck no, you are not going to irradiate fucking dragon's blood. We all know what happened with Bruce Banner when he got angry, now imagine making a _permanently angry_ species like a dragon go big-green-and-mutant every time it gets pissed off, it is so just not happening." Caspar snapped.

"Bruce Banner doesn't exist fuck-wit." Harry rolled his eyes.

"No, no, you can't kill the dragon!" panicked the man in the garish robes.

"Oh well, we'll keep it alive while we turn it into a couple of jackets and a set of stylish boots." said a disappointed-sounding blond.

"No, you will do no damage to the dragons!" the man told them; "They are an endangered species under hire to us, we don't own them!"

"Spoilsport. We'll let the dragon live... for now." Harry agreed; "Caspar, we can shoot a couple down later, I wonder what dragon tastes like? Bag-head or whatever your name is, go away, you're no longer wanted."

Unsurprisingly, he scuttled away.

"Do you want me to kill it anyway?" he asked, turning to Caspar, who was lounging in a deckchair.

"Not unless it does something to annoy you." Caspar shook his head; "If it does, just stick a rocket up its ass."

Harry grimaced at the image and accepted the bottle of vodka that his friend produced, passing it to him.

"This is the stuff!" he cheered, taking two gulps of the liquor before passing it to Caspar.

"You can't have any, you're all too young." Caspar stated, pointing to each of the champions before he paused, staring at Diggory with a strange look; "Did you just sparkle?!" he demanded.

"N-no." replied the other champion.

"I swear you just sparkled." Caspar shook his head, taking a swig of the vodka before passing it back to Harry, who in the spirit of being a bored scientist, applied a wandless flame-freezing charm to the liquor, set it on fire before drinking it. It was surprising that there was very little difference.

"You are younger zan we are, or at least Monsieur Potter eez." said the lone woman in the tent.

"Actually between Timeturner abuse and other temporal shit, I'm probably biologically seventeen or eighteen, and mentally, I have no idea. Six-year-old with a degree in nuclear physics and a boredom problem." Harry replied lazily; "As well as a coffee addiction."

A few minutes later, Harry walked into the arena, immediately reaching out with one hand to catch the deckchair he'd summoned from the tent. Sitting down comfortably, he summoned his cigar case, lighter and the bottle of vodka. After a minute of smoking and taking swigs from the bottle, he summoned a briefcase.

Flipping it open on his lap, he opened the laptop that was inside with an extra panel plugged into the USB port on the right-hand side of the machine. Booting it up and logging in, he then reached to the control panel on the side. Slotting a key into a car-lock-sized opening, he twisted it ninety degrees.

On the forest side of the arena, a mechanical bellow echoed. Harry grinned as the two windows on his screen came to life, each showing the live feed from a camera. Resting his fingers on the two side-by-side sprung sliders on the control panel, he pushed them forward.

The roar became a smoother, more intense sound and then the Champions' Tent collapsed. Khaki and beige, a Chieftain tank burst through, flattening it. Mounted next to the turret was a large two-part arm with a jaw-attachment at the end. Releasing the two sliders, they sprang back to fully-back, and the tank stopped moving. For a moment.

He pushed forward the right one slightly further forward than the left, steering it left as it came forward. A confused dragon looked down at the mechanical monster as it advanced towards it at around fifteen miles-per-hour. It then decided to roast the machine, and was surprised when it emerged unscathed. Harry grinned, he hadn't been sure, but the live test of his runic enchantments had worked.

Moving his left hand to control the movement, his right went to the small joystick. Pulling it back, the first section of the arm rose. Flicking a safety-catch-like switch on the side, he repeated it, extending the second section. The second window on the laptop screen followed it, while the first displayed what the tank driver would see.

Harry advanced the tank towards it, his right thumb going to another slider near the base of the joystick, controlling the opening and closing of the jaws. Carefully lowering the jaws around the golden egg in the nest, he closed them before pulling back the second section of the arm and lowering the first section, bringing the jaws in towards the tank. He smirked, his after-market demolition-style arm had been a gamble, he didn't know if it would work with the tank... but apparently it did. Pulling the left slider back beyond neutral and pushing the right one to fully open, he spun the Chieftain around before pressing both sliders fully open to drive to the judges' stand.

He brought the arm up and opened the jaws, dropping the egg in front of them, and to make a point, closed the jaws on the railing in front of them and tore it away. Bagman, Crouch, Dumbledore, Maxime and Karkaroff all swiftly conjured silvery ribbons in the shape of tens in the air as the jaws descended again.

* * *

"Does anyone know where my utter bastard of a colleague is?" Caspar asked, stalking into the Great Hall during a meal, looking mildly annoyed.

"I'm afraid Doctor Cain, that we haven't seen him since two days after the first task. Has he been missing for three weeks?" replied Dumbledore, grudgingly becoming used to the foul-mouthed teens.

"Normally I wouldn't give a shit if he was missing for two months, but the bastard owes me ten dollars and I want to know where he's put our nuclear submarine." Caspar commented.

"Yo, wassup!" said a cheerful voice from behind him.

"Potter you rotter, where the fuck have you been!" Caspar demanded.

"Russia, I gave them back their submarine, spoke with the President, who asked me why I am so strange, what I hoped to achieve by stealing a submarine, tried to set me up with one of his daughters, and then a list of people he likes, sort-of popular Russians, athletes, that kind of thing." Harry replied; "I didn't accept of course, but I did get a few weeks of flying lessons from the Air Force and a couple of old aircraft they didn't need anymore."

"Hang-on, since when have you worn a fucking suit?" said Caspar, seeing the sharp Armani suit his friend was wearing; "And you've fucking shaved... what the hell. Oh right, I see. Is she good looking?"

Harry threw three empty vodka bottles at Caspar, who drew his Sig and moved, stood with his right arm locked, and his left bent, supporting the butt of the pistol. He fired six times, rapidly squeezing the trigger. Each of the bottles received two bullets, shattering them all.

"Actually, she's a new employee. Ex-whatever-replaced-the-KGB, she 'retired' aged nineteen after stabbing her handler to death with a pencil. After hearing that stellar résumé, what could I do but hire her?" Harry grinned as Caspar holstered his Sig Sauer sidearm.

"Did she have a reason for stabbing her handler to death with a pencil?" Caspar asked.

"Yeah, she did and if she hadn't, I'd have made a point of visiting him for a touch of murder myself." replied Harry; "Anyway, did you get the jets done?"

"I fucked with time and space to do it, but they're all flyable." confirmed Caspar; "And I registered them as homebuilt aircraft because I don't think the Committee Against Aviation would approve."

"Fuck them then." Harry said dismissively.

"Oh yeah, and there's a guy you'll want to meet, he's cool but everyone thinks he's uncool." Caspar added; "Also, there's some kind of weird wizard ball on Christmas Day that you have to attend."

"Sorry, I'm going to be in Vienna during Christmas and I lost my Timeturner." Harry said regretfully, not mentioning that his Timeturner was an integral part of his aviator's watch and not lost, or that he was going to be in Vienna for the New Year, not Christmas. "And if you try and force me to attend, I will shoot you."

"Deal." Caspar smirked, unloading his pistol and emptying the magazine of all but one round. Harry, in the spirit of fairness, drew a Browning Hi-Power instead of the .460 M1911 with assault-rifle power. Removing the magazine, he emptied it until there was just one bullet left.

They stood opposite each-other, Caspar's gun in his waistband on his left-hand side, Harry's sat in a holster on his right hip. On an unspoken agreement, they both drew and fired. Despite his weapon being closer to his hand, the Harry took a bullet to his stomach, the bullet itself stopped by his body-armour which he almost perpetually wore under his clothes. Caspar had dived to one side as he fired, Harry's round embedding itself in the wall.

"You... bastard." grunted Caspar's victim.

"I win, yeah baby." said the blond smugly; "It wasn't so much a hollow victory as a hollow-point victory. Shoot, I win. Holey hell, you lost."

"Ever heard of a bad loser? Well, you're a bad winner." Harry stated, straightening out with a wince, contemplating reloading and shooting him before holstering his gun.

"Zero fucks were given." Caspar said apathetically; "Anyway, who's your girl, what does she look like and when did you get together? And is she magical?"

"Natasha, redhead and more than slightly kick-ass, and in a hotel in Köln about three days ago." Harry replied, slinging a brotherly arm around his shoulders as they strolled out; "But no, non-magical and knows about the wizarding world. But as we know, shooting someone, however magicked up they are, kills them."

Behind them, Albus Dumbledore watched and listened. To be honest, yes he had plans for the Boy-Who-Lived, and no, those plans didn't seem to factor in for him being brash, arrogant, skilled and generally obstinate, as well as highly intelligent. One thing he had noticed was that the two young men were usually completely honest, no matter how insulting and offensive their honesty was, they didn't tend to lie. Maybe openness would be best.

He had held hopes of setting them up with light-sided women, but evidently that plan was sunk before it had been launched. He was curious, however, of the kind of woman that could tie either of the two down.

* * *

Harry idly watched the conjured ducks swimming on the lake before Caspar fired his pistol. Bringing it up into his shoulder, the Hambrusch Jagdwaffen three-barrelled shotgun roared thrice. While he only got a few of the ducks, it was stylish, complete with dozens of scantily-clad nymphs engraved on the metal parts of the rifle.

"Now my turn." Caspar stated, conjuring a hundred or more ducks.

Littered on the shore of the lake were about half-a-dozen dead ducks, which were swiftly added to as Caspar's Saiga-12 chattered away on fully automatic as a thirty-round drum of twelve-gauge bird-shot ripped into the ducks which had taken flight. Finally, he lowered the smoking shotgun with a smug look on his face.

"My turn again." Harry snapped, summoning an FN Minimi out of a tear he opened in reality.

Caspar scowled and conjured a hundred more ducks and set them off with a pistol shot, only just giving Harry enough time to load a two-hundred round box. In fifteen seconds, the entire box was empty, the muzzle smoking and no ducks left. He looked smug until his friend conjured another flock of ducks, and not waiting for them to take off, summoned the RPG-7 he'd used in the basilisk-hunting expedition and a PG-7VR warhead.

Loading a two-stage warhead, he was just aiming when Harry fired a shot to set the ducks off. Correcting his aim, Caspar fired, watching in 'horror' as the rocket flew straight through the formation of birds, across the lake and, skimming the water, rammed into the side of Durmstrang's ship. The first stage of the warhead detonated, shattering the wooden hull. The second stage blew up having crossed the hold and hit the far side, water pouring in from both sides.

"I'm not here." Harry said, panicking slightly before turning back his Timeturner and hour. He was going to be in the Great Hall at exactly the moment that Caspar sank the Durmstrang ship.

* * *

Back in his usual combat boots, cargo trousers and t-shirt, Harry strolled into the Great Hall, contentedly swigging from a bottle of vodka, about five minutes before he and Caspar were going to start shooting. He produced his laptop from his pocket and threw himself down at the table with all the kids wearing blue-piped robes.

Then, after a moment's thought, he put the laptop away and produced a khaki-coloured tube around the length of a Bofors forty-millimetre shell and two times the width. Cracking it open, he found a tube with a slightly conical end. In the front went a metal cone and in the back went a significant amount of plastic explosive and a detonator. He then screwed on a second, shoe-polish tin-sized object to the front.

"May I ask what you're making?" asked a female voice.

Harry glanced up as he sealed the device to see the bushy-haired teenager wearing red-and-gold piped robes who had been annoyed about his planning to build a nuclear bomb.

"I decided that I need a faster route down to the potions' dungeon." he stated, standing up; "I recommend you stand back a fair distance because EFP's are dangerous. I am obliged by health and safety laws to tell you that you should really not do this at home... when anyone's looking at least."

Walking into the entrance hall, he placed the object off to one side and walked back into the Great Hall, waving his hand at the door as he walked past them.

"Mr. Potter, what's happening?" asked Dumbledore.

"I'm building an ventilation-shaft and new entrance to the dungeons." Harry replied, reaching into his pocket for the trigger for the detonator, a red button on a khaki cylinder an inch in diameter by two inches tall; "I'm using an enchanted tungsten penetrator and a plasticised chemical called pentaerythritol tetranitrate. Basically each molecule contains five atoms of carbon, eight of hydrogen, four of nitrogen and twelve of oxygen having started as pentaerythritol, five carbon, twelve hydrogen and four oxygen placed in a reaction concentrated nitric acid. Mine is sealed in a shaped container which directs the reaction with the oxygen when I press this button. However, before that reaction occurs, a concentrated super-acid will be released, followed by two atoms of iron and three of oxygen per molecule, otherwise known as rust and thermite. Magic prevents it making the pentaerythritol tetranitrate reacting with the ferrous oxide."

He was cut off by his phone ringing.

**FUCKING FUCKING FUCK. FUCKING FUCKING FUCK-**

Hitting the accept button, he raised it to his ear.

"Potter's bored body-double here, please leave any requests for locations to throw cruise missiles at." he drawled.

"_Hardy-har, get your ass to San Fran, there's some bastard of a serial rapist running around, and I want him to run straight into a bullet to the head._" replied one of his colleagues from the San Francisco PD, Jane Andrews.

"Meh, I'm on holiday, shoot the fucker yourself." Harry replied.

"_He's French._" Jane yelled as Harry lowered his phone, her voice echoing through the hall.

"Nah- all right, you've persuaded me." he chuckled, flipping shut his phone and turning to the ginger twins; "Yo, Weasels or whatever your name is, catch."

They grabbed the detonate button out of the air.

"Now don't set it off while I'm around because doing so would piss tall-dark-and-greasy the fuck off." Harry stated as he heard the distant sound of a rocket. "Damn, I shouldn't fly because I've drunk a pint of vodka, but fuck it, who gives two shits. Not me baby."

* * *

Strolling in at supper time, still wearing a g-suit, Harry noticed the large scorched hole in the floor of the the Entrance Hall. In the Great Hall, Caspar was waiting for him.

"Bitch, you heard, apart from two twins blowing a hole in the sort-of not-quite-as-big-hall-with-the-doors, some tosser sunk the Durmstrang pimp-ship." Caspar said, walking over.

"Yeah, I think it's the dumb-looking ones in yellow and black." replied Harry, scowling at the Hufflepuffs; "After all, everyone thinks that they're stupid and sort-of useless and the snake ones are intelligent and evil. But it's the stupid-looking ones who're secretly evil and using the really stupid snake-brats as cover."

"Man, that's some fucked up shit right there." Caspar nodded; "Last time I heard something that outlandish was the idea that Iraq had nukes, because if they had, we'd have stolen them long before 'Murica invaded."

"Declare a fucking war a couple of fucking weeks after you start blowing the shit out of those fuckers." Harry replied; "Anyway, I just did something totally fun."

"Go on!" urged Caspar.

"I shot this guy and then ran him over with mah police Tahoe. Then he arrived at autopsy pre-chopped up with his internal organs all swapped around so that his heart was in the right side of his ribcage. Man that was totally awesome." smirked Harry; "Anyway, I've been thinking about the second task of the tournament for _wizards_. Can you help me make a couple of dozen cruise missiles, they need to be nine-hundred-and-eighty millimetres, some four-hundred millimetre torpedoes and some five-three-three millimetre torpedoes?"

"Hell yes, we're going to need quite a lot of explosives though. Why do you need these?" Caspar asked.

"Remember that Juliett-class submarine I lost a few months ago? I found it under my bed." Harry replied.

"Damn, I don't think anyone will ever say that again." laughed Caspar; "Damn, I'll set to making the missiles and the torpedoes, what're you going to do."

"Shag." was Harry's reply.

"Talking of, when do I get to meet her?" Caspar asked.

"Soon enough, last I knew she was asleep on the Lockheed, mix of a bit of jet lag and having not bothered to for several nights." Harry answered, producing a cigar and lighting it.

"Don't want to know about your sex life." he said dryly.

"Then next time you bring a girl back to my place in San Fran I will shoot you." warned Harry; "Actually, you remember when Singapore sold their Hawker Hunters to some Aussie company about ten years ago? They kept them in storage for about two years and then put them up for sale. I bought the lot and put them in storage and forgot about them. I was thinking we could set up a private air force to fuck up any misguided shits who decide to piss us off."

"Anyway, apart from Vienna for the New Year's concert, what are we doing this Christmas?" said Caspar, accepting an offered cigar and lighting it.

"I was thinking we all go out to Montreux."

"On the Lake Geneva shoreline." the blond smirked.

"There's some pretty good skiing on either side of the Rhone valley, with the Bernese Alps in the north and the Pennine Alps in the south." Caspar mused.

"Anyway, let's head over to our flying headquarters, see if 'Tasha is up yet." Harry ordered.

"You like this gal?" he asked.

"If you'd told me a couple of weeks ago I would have shot you. But she's kinda different, doesn't mind that I am occasionally a bit childish and have a permanent obsession with blowing stuff up." replied Harry after a few moment's pause; "She was sent to supervise me while I was doing a bit of flying to make sure I didn't get into trouble, along with a strong recommendation I hire her because apparently they didn't want her around. I found out why and hired her on the spot. Couple of days later in a hotel on our way back, we're a couple."

"Shut up, you sound so sickly-lovestruck that I want to shoot you." Caspar stated.

"Bring it." Harry challenged.

"Nah, let's go and do something useful." replied the blond.

* * *

"There are many things I let you have opinions on, but there is just _no way_, no way _at all_, that AC/DC is anywhere near as good as Led Zeppelin!" Natasha heard Harry ranting, his voice running down the fuselage of their flying headquarters. She'd left the bedroom with dark-green hangings all around the walls and a thick, warm mattress.

"But-" began a second male voice.

"No, no, no. Nein, nyet. Led Zeppelin trounces the shit out of everything else." Harry cut him off; "Sure, AC/DC is good, but not _that_ good."

Harry entered with his trademark roguish grin, twinkling green eyes and lazily ruffled hair, followed by a tall, similarly-built blond with grey eyes and hair slightly spiked at the front.

"Hey Tasha, this is Caspar, my bloodless-brother since I was about seven." Harry introduced.

Natasha Romanova was a beauty of the highest calibre, with flame-red hair lying just below her shoulders, slightly pouty lips and pale green eyes.

"Doctor Caspar Cain, at your service." the blond greeted.

"Natasha Romanova _Gospodin_ Cain." she replied.

"So, what persuaded you to associate with the insane imbecile here?" he asked, throwing himself into an armchair, avoiding Harry's head-slap.

"He amuses me." Natasha shrugged, smirking slightly at the insulted look on Harry's face; "And he doesn't mind my own eccentricities."

"Ooh goody. Since he's a flaming idiot who wouldn't have survived his tenth birthday without me stopping him from blowing himself up, I admit I'm a bit eccentric, I bought a VW Beetle when I was eight and turned it into a hundred-and-eighty mile-an-hour racer." Caspar stated; "So, what've you done?"

"When I was at the Bolshoi Theatre school of dance, I drop-kicked one of the wealthy patrons down a staircase for propositioning me." she replied with a sickly smile; "And I stabbed my SVR handler to death using a pencil when he locked me in his office and tried to use me."

"Remind me not to get on her wrong side." Caspar told Harry.

"If you show me the same consideration." chuckled the black-haired young man, sitting down on the floor in front of Natasha, summoning a book and leaning against her legs as she chatted with Caspar.

* * *

"So how did flying the MiG go?" Caspar asked as they walked down the stairs.

"Not bad, the top speed is increased by a small amount at fifty-five to sixty thousand feet and acceleration is significantly increased at ten-thousand feet and above, it's not very different at sea level." Harry replied; "Reminds me, I have a load of aeroplanes in my pocket."

"In your pocket." said Natasha slowly.

Harry smirked as they reached the bottom, reaching into his pocket to pull out a fistful of forty black sticks of plastic folded up, each two feet in length, held together by stretchy wire. Flicking his hand at it, they erected themselves into an eighty-foot circumference semi-circle.

Tapping his hand against one of the sticks, briefly a black void filled the gap between them and then a massive hanger appeared on the far side of the portal, while only being millimetres thick. Inside were row upon row of aeroplanes. Harry then tapped his hand on the same stick again, deactivating the pocket dimension before turning the arch into a bundle of lengths of plastic which he tucked into his pocket.

"Anyway, shall we go and get some supper. Hang-on, damn, it's night-time already." Harry stated, looking at the sky; "London nightclubs?"

"I've never been to London." said Natasha.

"Not as good as San Fran, Las Vegas or Monaco, but there are some good spots." said Caspar.

* * *

"ARGH MY EYES!"

Harry and Natasha smirked at each other as they heard the scream of agony reverberate through the aircraft.

"And sometime soon, he'll find you've liberated all his hangover relievers." Harry said smugly; "And he'll have to face daylight with a hangover the size of a planet."

"Yep." Natasha chirruped.

"You are wicked." he laughed, nibbling along her jaw.

"I think that was among the complements you used last night." she said with a throaty chuckle.

A bit over an hour later, they walked into the Great Hall as Dumbledore was standing up to begin a speech.

"Students, teachers and guests, I would just like to remind you that on Christmas Day, lasting from mid-afternoon to an hour after normal curfew time, our Yule Ball will be held. All students from fourth year and up are allowed to come, along with dates of fourth years and above." he boomed.

Harry, Caspar and Natasha ignored him, settling at the end of the 'blue and sort-of coppery-bronze with a hint of week-old steak' table, as named by the blond. Until the redhead noticed around a quarter of the school gazing at her boyfriend with lust, an another quarter at her boyfriend's best friend.

Producing a Châtellerault switchblade, she flicked it open and closed a couple of times before spearing a pear from a nearby fruit-bowl and skilfully diced it.

"Anyway, what's on the agenda for today?" asked Harry.

"I've finished building the bodies of the torpedoes you requested. You know how some bombs actually don't have warheads but just momentum and a concrete head? I was wondering how one of those would work against a variety of targets." replied Caspar, chewing on a bacon-sausage-egg-and-everything-in-reach toasted sandwich. "I need rocket motors for the missiles, I raided your stash of explosives for the warheads, guidance may be a bit difficult if we do it traditionally, but I think I could probably come up with a fairly effective combination of magic and technology."

"Remember that you'd need a self-destruct system because you don't want concrete-headed torpedoes lying in the wreck of whatever you've sunk." Natasha commented; "And you'd need a fairly high impact speed to do any damage to anything at all, let alone a metal target."

"Luckily we have a test target and firing range for weaker types of target." Caspar smirked; "Anyway, these could be useful for blowing off sensors, rudders, the bits which stick out."

"What about attaching some kind of retrieval system, be it magical or not?" asked Harry.

"I'll look at the plans." nodded the blond; "Can you look at doing some politicking, I know usually our method of diplomacy is shooting everyone who disagrees with us but diplomacy links into the gathering of intelligence which we've rather neglected during our time here."

"Find who's where." Natasha nodded; "Harry explained briefly why he was here and I'm wondering if someone had a reason to enter you, beyond forcing a celebrity to visit. Since it has to be a magical, someone probably means you harm, so if you find out, retaliate."

"I love that word." said Caspar dreamily, and then yelped as she elbowed him in the ribs. "By the way, have you made any plots for the Second Task? I know we've got until February."

"Think why I asked you for those torpedoes." Harry smirked. "I need a wetsuit, we need to make sure I can get into the wet-room from both sides and the water pumps will empty it of water. As well as making sure it's watertight because otherwise it would just be embarrassing."

"Awesome. How did you know what the Second Task is?" asked Caspar.

"The egg contained a bit of poetry in Mermish, secondly I looked in the library, the three tasks usually are to do with elements, one doubles over. The first was air and fire, and an educated guess confirmed the next is water. I have a mind which is not solely comprised of bomb-making knowledge." said Harry, reaching into his pocket for a bottle of vodka, which Caspar snatched and poured over the cereal he was having after finishing his sandwich.

"You know that can't be healthy." Natasha deadpanned.

"Meh." was Caspar's response.

"Eloquent." Harry said despairingly.

"Fuck off."

They were just walking out into the Entrance Hall when a loud argument brewing between the bushy-haired girl and a ginger-haired boy who looked like Harry when someone told him he was wrong.

"Hey Granger, I know you're a bookworm, but you're a girl, you can go to the ball with me!"

Natasha slipped out of Harry's arm and walked forward, her lips in a pout with the tiniest hint of a smirk, hips swaying as she approached the ginger.

"Well, why don't you see if a real woman will go with you?" she purred. The ginger looked stupefied, then hungry with lust, and then back to stupefied. Though the return to stupefied was probably from Natasha's foot smashing into his temple in a Mawashi-geri kick, and as she spun around, her elbow following through with a strike to his solar plexus. "I suddenly feel a lot better, what an utter imbecile."

"You should have just shot him, or let Darwin consume him. Theory of evolution, strongest survive. I think he's on a level with a slightly pathetic diseased mouse." Caspar stated, kicking him into the hole blown in the floor of the Entrance Hall, which still hadn't been fixed.

"Granger, being a bookworm is awesome, how do you think I achieve anything in life? I spend more time reading than almost anything else." Harry advised.

"Yeah, six hours a day reading explosives catalogues." Caspar rolled his eyes.

"Fuck you, you're off my Christmas card list." replied Harry.

"Please, the only person you've sent a Christmas card to was Saddam Hussein for letting you steal a good portion of what was left of his Air Force after the Iranians kept a load of it." countered Caspar.

"Meh."

"Do you two just dismiss anything that disagrees with your position." asked Granger.

"Pretty much." Caspar answered; "Anyway, we've gotta go."

"But Granger, if someone is like that to you, put them in hospital." Natasha advised, her soft Russian accent contrasting with her native-fluency in English, before Harry added helpfully; "Or shoot them."

"Harry, can you have a look at our finances, I haven't remembered to do that in a few weeks." requested Caspar as they walked down the lawn; "And see what's become of the aircraft we've sold."

"Hang-on." Harry said, booting up his laptop; "As per the contract of first rights of refusal on the purchase of our aircraft, I've bought back two MiG-21s from owners who didn't realise they cost so much to run. We sold them each for two-hundred thousand, I bought them back for a total of two-fifty thousand, or one-two-five each. Investments income for this quarter are projected at ten-million, while reinvestment will be five-million, leaving us with another five. There are three aircraft engines awaiting winter servicing and rebuilding which we need to get done by January, income for that should be about two-hundred grand. Magical investments are coming in at about six million, our quarterly subsidy from from the Department of Defence has come in for flying aggressor squadron operations, even though we haven't done that since September. It adds another two-million plus all personal pay for all our jobs, totalling for the both of us something like five-hundred grand. Expenditure totals that five-hundred grand leaving us thirteen million seven-hundred grand in pocket. Or should do when investments come in."

"Good good." Caspar replied.

"One moment... why is there a glaring twenty-million pound hole in my budget." Harry asked confusedly, frowning before glaring at the blond.

"I was drunk and I bought an airfield off an company wanting to turn it into a housing estate. They lost two-million on the deal at least." said Caspar in embarrassment.

"I can no longer talk to you. Go and make my explosives." said Harry calmly.

"You're not pissed off?" asked Caspar.

"Having an airfield beyond this place could be useful, where is it?" replied Harry.

"Wisley, right next to the London orbital motorway and the motorway from London to Portsmouth. It's a bit disused but I'm thinking in the New Year of resurfacing it, putting back the airfield lights and see how receptive the locals are to some classic aircraft coming in and out." Caspar stated.

"They probably won't appreciate night-flying. Spend some time down there, get drunk with the locals, make yourself the good guy. Having an edge-of-London airfield could be incredibly useful." Harry instructed, closing his laptop; "Luckily, we have more than enough money to cover the hole you put in our budget, but please don't do it so hastily in the future. Also, when I get some time, I'm going to scout out aircraft in this country which would be useful."

* * *

At lunchtime, they met in the dining room on the Constellation, where Harry had flambéed a couple of lamb steaks for them to eat.

"So, tell me about the clue in the egg that's having you get me to build you the weapons." ordered Caspar.

"It went along the lines of having no prospect of rescuing something I'll sorely miss after an hour, and it will be 'where our voices sound', which given it was in Mermish, we can expect to be underwater. Bodies of water around here, you get the Black Lake, and what better to do this task in than a several-thousand ton submarine." replied Harry.

"Hold on, they're taking something you'll sorely miss and hiding it at the bottom of a lake in the end of winter, which will be icy-cold, though better than a Russian winter." said Natasha; "Do you get any option about what they're taking, or whether you want it taken?"

"Almost all of my stuff is resistant to anyone but Caspar and I using magic on it, so they can't steal one of my planes and shrink it." Harry shook his head.

"Since objects are out, what about people?" asked the blond.

"Kidnapping is frowned upon unless you are Mossad." Natasha stated; "Because God, on the sixth day, created the Mossad, and on the seventh, he forgot to tell them if there was anything they aren't allowed to do."

"Play the devil's advocate, the people you interact with come into a couple of categories. Contemptible, ignore, apathetic, colleagues, me and Natasha." Caspar interjected; "We can rule out the thirst three. It's unlikely that they'll kidnap any of our co-workers as I don't think they know who they are, where they are and will be unwilling to go into the non-magical world. That leaves Natasha and myself."

"I'm going to do a quick exploration of the Black Lake so you can program a dive path for the submarine in advance, in case you are the hostage. Otherwise, GPS trackers, tracking charms and the whole lot." Harry nodded, glancing at his watch; "It's now, what... the sixteenth of December. We've got plenty of time."

"I've got a diving suit, oxygen mask and the rest of the gear, do you want me to check the lake?" Natasha offered.

"Go ahead." said Harry.

"Reminds me, I know you got tickets for the Vienna New Year's Concert at the Musikverein, I also got you two an early Christmas present, two tickets to the Silvesterball at the Hofburg Palace." Caspar smirked; "Originally, it was intended to humiliate you when you were too socially inept to get a date, but some things change. Speaking of, what happened in Vegas when you got called over?"

"Some serial rapist, I ran him over in my Tahoe and shot him. Then rearranged his insides before the autopsy." Harry said dismissively; "Want a game of cards?"

Natasha looked back and forward between the two, amazed at how quickly they could change the subject.

"Sure, but we're sticking to Texas Hold 'Em, no switching games without telling anyone." replied Caspar, summoning three shot glasses and a bottle of vodka.

* * *

"Natasha, we really need to get you a car." Caspar commented the next morning, rather worried by the fact she'd easily kept up with their drinking.

"Shut up." she grumbled from where she was curled up, catlike, in Harry's arms, stretched lengthways down a sofa.

She wasn't a morning person.

"Coffee..." Harry groaned, hand drifting towards his pistol holster; "Get it and I won't shoot you."

Deciding that self-survival trumped his courage, the blond slipped through to the kitchen and quickly produced a large carafe of strong black coffee, piping hot and laced heavily with whisky.

A few hours later, Harry was lounging in the entrance hall, idly sharpening the edge of an early seventeenth-century Toledo rapier he often used, waiting for Caspar to reappear from wherever he'd gone. The sword was an elegant affair with a blade slightly thicker than many rapiers, designed for effective cutting and thrusting, an Italianate swept-hilt and the grip re-skinned in tough basilisk hide. It was effectively an Espada Ropera, made for both duelling and proper fighting.

"Yo, wassup?" called Caspar as he walked in.

"I strongly recommend we attend lunch tonight." Harry stated, pocketing the whetstone and using a damp rag to clean off the blade before placing it in a sheath in his pocket.

A few minutes later, Dumbledore was looking at the three of them slightly worriedly. Though he hadn't had time to find out anything about the young woman, neither of the boys had ever come to meals at the beginning, but just walked in when they felt like it.

Then there were the hoodies all three were wearing, tan coloured with the words 'Boredom to Chaos converter' emblazoned on them. And then the symptoms of chaos emerged, much to the glee of the large black, grim-like dog who was curled up under the table.

First Madam Pince rushed in.

"HEADMASTER! SOME DELINQUENT HAS REPLACED EVERY BOOK IN THE CASTLE WITH KARL MARX'S DAS CAPITAL!"

Following on immediately, Snape's greasy black hair grew to the small of his back and turned to slightly wavy, glossy and worst of all, blonde. Then there was a loud bang and the Great Hall was filled with pink smoke which, it turned out, only turned different colours when vanished. The finale was the simultaneous replacement of the house flags with the Stars and Stripes flag of America and the ceiling displaying a twisting rainbow, knotted around its own length dozens of times.

Caspar gave Harry a look of deep respect and a high-five.


	20. Operative Wolf

"Harry, can I speak to you for a moment." asked Professor Lupin as the lesson ended. The other students trooped out, Hermione and Ron casting glances at the teacher before moving to stand outside the door.

Lupin drew his wand and gestured at the walls, ceiling and floor, pale wisps of magic leaving the tip and impacting the stones surrounding them.

"Just an area silencing charm." he said reassuringly; "I'd like to ask you why your written work is downright awful, and so is half of your spellwork, yet sometimes when you don't think I can see, you'll perform the spells perfectly?"

Harry was taken aback, slowly replying;

"I don't know sir."

"James could never lie convincingly to me." Lupin commented; "Could we try again, even if it's not to Professor Lupin, but to Remus, one of your parents' friends."

"If you were one of their friends, why was I dumped with Petunia Dursley." Harry hissed, Lupin's manipulative comment hitting a sore spot.

"Petunia?" scowled Lupin; "You were dumped with that harpy? Dumbledore assured me you were well cared-for. Of course, Dumbledore assured me."

"What?" asked Harry, not expecting that.

"During the time your parents went into hiding, there had been a rumour that Voldemort had created a method of forcibly controlling werewolves, such as myself." Lupin admitted, looking at Harry for any sign of surprise or the expected revulsion and hatred.

"Sir, I've spent enough of my life hated for things I can't control. And you only turn into a rabid blood-thirsty monster once a month." Harry said dryly.

"Yes, well, your parents ordered me to go into hiding to make sure Voldemort couldn't control me. When I came out of hiding, James and Lily were dead, you had vanished and Dumbledore assured me you were fine. But he also erected wards which prevented any werewolves from coming close to you." grumbled Lupin; "I couldn't do anything. I could only go on the reassurances that you were fine, even sending people by proxy didn't work."

"God damn him!" Harry cursed; "Sir, one thing I've noticed, you've got magic, but you dress like you're a pauper."

"Very clever." Lupin replied with a smirk; "You're right. I made my life outside the magical world because werewolves are almost completely unemployable and hated here. I bought a couple of thousand pounds worth of broken antique furniture, repaired it with magic, sold it. I did that for about a year with antiques, cars and all sorts, I became pretty rich, but it wasn't the right thing. I was approached by MI5 who knew a bit of the magical world, they're Britain's security service. I'm on a year's leave to infiltrate Hogwarts and try and make contact with you, but I'm a commissioned officer in the Parachute Regiment, but like many others, I have the tan beret of the Special Air Service."

"Holy shit." said Harry; "Well Commander Bond, I think we'll have a marvellous friendship."

Lupin laughed and responded;

"Indeed Mister Leiter. But Bond was MI6, and a rather bad parody of it." he then sobered; "I've heard some disturbing rumours about your last few years here, come to my office for an hour after each day's lessons and I'll teach you a few things to keep you alive."

* * *

That first afternoon, Lupin began by teaching Harry some basic meditation and instructing him how to clear his mind of thought before making sure he knew how to fall. After that, for week after week except during his transformations, Harry underwent gruelling training at the man's hands.

Trying to clear your mind while fending off a constant shower of attacks wasn't easy. An expanded room gave him somewhere to run every day, putting miles in beyond the usual daily racing up and down the steep staircases of the castle to get to and from lessons. Hidden under his robes, the twelve-year old put on some serious muscle definition, which the werewolf thought was much-needed.

It came and the cost of a lot more food. Harry was eating massive meals daily and protein boosters as his taskmaster thrashed him through hours of training, neither caring that they'd ceased sticking to the hour-per-day. Lupin had even procured some blunted knives and begun teaching Harry how to wield one as he firmly believed that if you deprived a wizard of their wand, they were, for the most-part, entirely defenceless.

* * *

"Harry, don't let the moron go off." drawled a voice in the shadows of the courtyard as he and Hermione were about to see Sirius off with Buckbeak.

"Boss?" asked Harry, recognising the voice, greeting him as he'd come to call the man.

"I've got your Timeturner from about ten hours in the future." Remus commented, stepping out of the shadow; "Sirius you twit, I admit I FUBAR'ed getting Peter, but I'll get you a trial if it kills a number of people, none of them me or people I care about. I'm certain their names will be Fudge."

"Remus?"

"Trust him Sirius. Remus has done a lot for me this year." Harry ordered.

"Harry, you and Miss Granger really ought to head back to the hospital wing, I happen to know that Professor Snivellus is going to try and get you both expelled." Remus added; "I'll do a Jericho during the summer Harry."

He grinned, knowing of Operation Jericho from one of a number of books Remus had given him on modern warfare, including the Amiens prison raid. Breakout time.


	21. Crusader: The Count

_New story. Through means to later be explained, one Hadrian James Potter ends up in the twelfth century. By the time of the story, his appearance is that of Raymond 'Tiberius', Count of Tripoli, Prince of Galilee and Tiberius from the film 'The Kingdom of Heaven'._

_Most other characters take their appearances from the 2010 Robin Hood film._

_The spoken language of the higher society of the Crusader States and England, amongst other lands at the time would have been Old French, but as I am neither fluent nor literate in the language or its modern counterpart, I shall not attempt to mangle it. To the same theme, the written language of the nobility would have been Latin, of which my comprehension is minimal._

**May 1199, the Royal Palace and Fortress of the White Tower, London**

"England is penniless! Richard spent all we have on his crusade. Then we pay thirty-seven long tonnes of silver to free him from a captivity that his own brash provocation brought about! Then he beings another crusade to regain lands lost in France as he rode across the Kingdom of Jerusalem!" thundered King John.

It had been but days since he had received the crown of England officially. His elder brother Richard, dead. That was a fate he did not wish on Richard. Imprisoned maybe, for his brother had lost much land in the Angevin Empire, had led a Crusade which had failed to regain Jerusalem, gained England, and himself many enemies. Then on his way to return he had fallen into the hands of one he had offended. It is true, he, John, had tried to extend his imprisonment, but Richard had been destroying Britain. Then his beloved mother had stepped in and ransomed Richard, once again at great cost to England. The only good thing his brother had done for the country was naming him, John Plantagenet, as his heir over their Geoffrey's bastard son. And then he'd ridden to subjugate the lands in France that had been lost through his inaction.

He was distracted from his chain of thoughts by the door slipping open and one of the fortress guards slipping in.

"Excusin' me Your Majesty, a man wishes to speak with you, he says he is a pilgrim returned from the Holy Land." announced the guard.

"Send him away!" snapped John, the stresses of his position almost physically weighing on him. His outburst had him receiving disapproving looks from several of his advisers, including the recently-elevated Geoffrey FitzPeter, the Constable of the Tower and Earl of Essex, his brother's former Chief Justiciar.

"Sire, should we at least not show charity by showing the pilgrim our hospitality, see him fed." asked FitzPeter.

"Then go Geoffrey, go and wash the feet of this pilgrim!" scowled the King, and when the Earl hesitated, stormed over to him; "I recall it was you who offered to play servant on my behalf, you haven't changed your mind, have you?"

"No Your Majesty. If I may excuse myself from your presence." bowed FitzPeter and swept out upon receiving a dismissing wave from his monarch.

* * *

Hadrian Potter only had to wait a few minutes before a servant bid he came into a room in one of the wings of the fortress, where he was to wash before being led to a place to eat. Smiling thinly, he glanced around the room, bare, not befitting of a nobleman. A small prank on his part. Lowering the hood on his dark robe, he walked over to a a burnished buckler placed over a stone basin to act as a mirror.

Jet black hair had began to fade to iron grey, a jagged scar tore across his right eyebrow and down the very edge of his eye before disappearing down his cheek. A gift courtesy of the hand of the Ayyubid Sultan Salah ad-din ibn Ayyub. The only man in the Holy Land who could match him in a fight blow for blow. The man was now dead, and indeed he had felt a twinge of sadness at the death of an old, powerful and respected adversary.

Shedding his dark robe to a stand, he drew a dagger from his belt and began to clear the sideburns that had grown down to meet the small beard that covered his his chin, meeting a simple moustache. There was a bare patch in the overgrown sideburns where the scar prevented anything growing.

Glancing over at the large leather bag which contained such possessions as he felt like carrying back from his castle in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

A few minutes later, he'd suitably refreshed himself, and unbuttoned the rim of his bag. Inside was a sword, a dark-blue cloak lined with velvet, a simple leather jerkin, a hooded mail hauberk and a surcoat. He was already wearing his boots, simple black cotton trousers and shirt with another leather jerkin buttoned over it.

Harry shrugged off the leather jerkin, and with an almost undetectable gesture, applied a simple cleaning charm to himself, without using any kind of foci. Sighing slightly as he traced the long thin line across his neck which had come about when an assassin tried to cut his throat, he blinked before returning to what he was doing. Replacing the leather jerkin, he then pulled on the hauberk, which clinked loudly as it fell into place. The surcoat, a long, sleeveless coat which fell over the hauberk, he quickly pulled over him. Finally, he reached into the bag and drew out a sheathed bastard sword, with a belt attached to it, which went around his waist.

The surcoat was a deep, dark blue, with the four gold crosses, on the white background of a shield, between the arms of a final, larger cross, the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem on his left breast and his own coat of arms in the centre, a serpent encircling a sword bordered by a white Maltese cross on a black background in each corner. A Hospitaller. A crusader. A nobleman of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He had served in the immense hospital of the Knights of St. John himself as a healer on many occasions, even when he had his own fiefdoms and people.

Finally, he placed his signet ring on a finger as someone rapped on the door.

"Come!" he growled. The cut across his throat had ended any chances of him being a skilled singer, giving him all the vocal tonal qualities of two millstones grinding together.

"My lord the Constable bids that you-" began the servant, stepping into the room as Harry turned around to pull his cloak about his shoulders.

"Yes?" Harry barked impatiently.

"Bids that you share what domains you possess, and what title you wish to be addressed." lied the servant smoothly. The servant knew instantly that the man opposite him was not fooled by the lie as a thin smile unfolded on his face.

"I am Count Hadrian of La Bana, I possess amongst other lesser domains, four _lieues communes _east of Acre, a great fortress with a monastery controlling the settlement of Deir el-Asad and the most important road leading to the Sea of Galilee." Harry replied after allowing the servant to linger uncomfortably in silence for a few long moments.

"My Lord." nodded the servant; "If you will allow me to find whether your meal has been prepared. I will see that you are given suitable quarters to stay the night."

"You have my permission." Harry jerked his head to the servant before turning away to repack his leather bag; "And see that my horse is well-cared for."

"Of course my lord." the servant bowed and departed.

Reaching into the bag, Harry drew out a selection of over half-a-dozen daggers, which went into folds of his surcoat, the sides of his boots, folds of his cloak, even under the long sleeves of his hauberk. He had heard things, both good and bad of the new King of England, and he wasn't taking any chances.

Slowly seating himself on a cross-framed chair, he leaned back and waited. It took a few minutes before there was another rap on the door, to which he waited a few moments so as to give the person on the other side the impression he wasn't in any hurry, before rising to his feet.

"Enter!" he growled.

The person who opened the door was the same servant, but swiftly stepped aside to allow another man, noticeably quite young, maybe in his thirties, dressed in more opulent robes that signified a high station. Yet, the new man did not have the look of someone who had fought in the line of battle, carried sword or spear in anger or knowingly dispatched a man, watching the light in his eyes die.

"Count Hadrian, I am Geoffrey FitzPeter, Earl of Essex and Constable of the Tower of London. I am bidden to bring you before His Majesty to dine." introduced the man.

"Indeed." Harry nodded tersely, as no noble he had known in the Holy Land had not at one time or another raised a sword, to see a man who had none of the marks of a fighter in such a high position was not something he was used to. Yet it seemed it was something he would have to grow used to.


	22. Crusader: Riding to War

**September 1171, London, England**

Harry Potter laboured on one end of a saw, the huge man at the other end pulling in the opposite direction as he pushed. They sawed until the huge tree they were cutting was halved. Soon the two men, the huge carpenter and his slight apprentice once again sawing away. They split the halves of the tree in half, so that there were eight massive sections of timber lying in the saw pit before them.

"We need rope. We need nails, bands of iron. The forge, get going!" Harry shouted. As a carpenter's apprentice he had some little power over the other employees. Tancred of London was a master craftsman, and a enginer. He created great siege machines at great cost for 'great' men. In this case, it was King Henry II of England who intended to take his army to war against Welsh rebels and the Irish.

Though it was 1171, he still felt wrong, not departing London for Hogwarts. It had been a year since he had seen any of his friends, vanishing in the Department of Mysteries aged just fifteen years. Now he was trying to make his way in a hostile time. A touch of magic here and there wasn't detected, but did earn him position as the apprentice to a master craftsman.

A few days later, they were disassembling the catapult they'd built and put together. The weapon, when disassembled could be carried by a couple of carts and assembled in a matter of hours. Harry swept a damp rag over his forehead and looked up to see a column of men on horseback ride into the courtyard of the workshop. The first rider was wearing a blood red surcoat with a lion rampant on it. He also wore glittering chainmail, and was followed by a bodyguard of knights bearing banners which flew their own coats of arms.

"The King!" Harry yelled.

Immediately, work ceased and every man of them fell to one knee before the monarch, Henry the Second of England, who gently brought his horse forward to next to Tancred before dismounting.

"Stand, loyal engineer." the King said into the thick silence, broken only by his voice and the sound of horses chomping at the bit of their reins.

"Sire." replied Tancred, climbing stiffly to his feet.

"I am to sail to Waterford within the month. What equipments are ready?" demanded Henry.

"Five siege towers, two mangonels and a trebuchet sire. But..." Tancred began before trailing off.

"Do not fear, speak your mind." the King urged.

"I am an enginer, I create machines. I am long past the age where I can direct a siege, and all those who could do so, do so in the Holy Land." said Tancred.

"You have no man amongst you who knows how to direct the use of these contraptions?" Henry sighed.

"I have but one, and he is not yet twenty years of age, but only sixteen. Hadrian, son of James the Potter." Tancred said hesitantly glancing at his expressionless apprentice.

"I would not have his death on my conscience. And yet I cannot call off my campaign." cursed the King before reaching into a pouch on his belt; "Five pounds. See that he is supplied with a fast horse, a good sword, a haubergeon and a shield of his choice, and when he is equipped, he can catch up with the carts. See that the siege towers and the catapults are disassembled and loaded on the carts to Abertawe, from whence we sail."

"Your Majesty." said Tancred, accepting the coins.

"Hadrian, son of James, stand forward." called the King.

Harry was still for a moment. This was nothing like what he'd intended in life. Nor what he'd intended since his little trip through the space-time-continuum, which had been to set himself up with enough wealth to buy a comfortable home and study magic to attempt to reverse his trip. Going to war was not on his list of intentions. And yet it seemed he had no choice.

He rose slowly and stepped forward into the courtyard, standing tall with his hands clasping each-other behind his back as Henry walked over. Harry's first impression of the king was that he was red-headed. Darker than the Weasleys hair, but otherwise similar, he even had the same freckles.

"Are you loyal to the crown?" the King demanded.

"I am sire." Harry replied simply.

"And would you be willing to take the place of master of the engines in my army?" Henry asked.

"If it is what Your Majesty wills." answered Harry, wondering if he could get an award for his brown-nosing.

"Do you have a family?" was the next question.

"Dead. They are avenged." said Harry, for a moment recalling throwing Tom Riddle into the Veil of Death after a ferocious magical firefight through the Ministry of Magic; "My home is here, in the workshops."

"You will receive pay proportionate to your position, and successes, but that leaves us with an issue. What do you wish to be done with the money as it will be more than you can simply carry in a purse." said the King; "If you wish, matters of your finances can be detailed in Our treasury."

"That is fine sire." Harry nodded.

* * *

Harry crouched in the saddle and dug his feet into the flanks of his horse. He was lucky in that the horse was fresh and fast, they had slept until an hour before, and had drunk. But now, he was intending on catching up with the carts carrying the parts of their siege weapons. It had taken several days to gather together the armour, weapon and animal the king had paid for, but now, as he neared where he believed the carts would be, he could hear screams.

Wales was a dangerous place, parts of it were supposedly under control of Marcher Lords, who had unprecedented powers over their lands, but still, bandits, rebels and other enemies roamed the country. Bursting around the end of a spit of woodland, he found the path of the road littered with bodies.

Quickly assessing the situation, Harry couldn't see any of the cavalry, or even the infantry, evidently the slow-moving column of carts had been left behind. Crawling over the carts were men, often with thick, wild beards, untamed hair, rebels who lived in the dark corners of Wales. They dispatched the carters without mercy.

As he watched, one of the carters broke away and, with an axe, severed the halters holding one of the great carthorses to a cart, and leapt on the back of the animal, driving it into a gallop. Harry urged his own horse forward, drawing his sword from where it was sheathed by his side.

Breaking into a charge, he swept down the line of carts, on their left side. As a rebel stood up on the bench of one of the carts, facing away from Harry and he hoisting a spear in the air triumphantly, Harry came at him, sword raised and delivered a savage strike right across his spine, severing it in a single strike and bringing him off the cart.

Rebels carrying spears began to assemble across the breadth of the road as he bore down on them, yet they did so in a line, a mistake. Bringing his sword down to his right thigh, Harry parried away a spear-thrust and drew the blade around, beheading the spearman in the half-a-second that he was right next to the spearman.

He jerked back on the reins as another spear was presented right in his path. Wheeling around, the horse gave him a perfect angle to deliver a skull-splitting slash before he was set upon by the remaining spearmen. One of the polearms grazed the horse's flank, which only served to anger it. Harry held on desperately with his knees as the steed reared under him and kicked out, one hoof landing squarely in the face of the one who had wounded it.

Regaining control of his mount, Harry spun around, and with a last slice aimed at the head of one of his attackers, urged the horse into a gallop, back up the line of carts. Approaching one of them was a rebel carrying a burning brand, evidently intent on torching the contents. Seizing a spear clutched in the dead grip of one of the guards who was slumped on the bench of the cart with two arrows in his chest, Harry hurled it across a cart, and with a great deal of luck and almost no skill, landed the weapon. With the spear piercing through his chest, the torch-bearer stumbled and fell, tumbling into the roadside ditch, extinguishing the torch.

Returning his sword to his right hand, Harry trotted the horse slowly between the carts, suddenly wheeling his mount to the right as another rebel broke from the treeline and dashed at him, wielding a great Dane Axe. Harry lowered his sword and charged. The axe-wielder hunched and brandished the axe above his head.

Harry ducked under the blade of the weapon as it swung by his head, jerking the horse around to allow him to deliver a lethal thrust to his opponent. Jerking the horse about again, he urged it, first, into a canter and then a gallop as he spotted one of the carts being dragged off by the rebels.

They scattered as a thousand pounds of flesh and its rider bore down on them. A flash of scarlet as blood burgeoned from a sword-wound opened by the rider. Harry suddenly found his chest inches from a quarterstaff. But he was still moving, fast. For a moment, an incredible ache filled his chest as the wooden pole drove his chainmail into his chest, and flung him from the saddle, landing heavily on the muddy ground.

Rolling to his feet and grabbing his sword, Harry brought it into a horizontal parry as the quarterstaff-bearer brought his weapon down towards his head. Already weakened by the impact of a lightly-armoured adolescent, the length of wood broke over the sword-blade. Harry swiftly brought it down in a horizontal U-shape, splitting open his attacker's stomach. As the man's hands reflexively went down to cover the wound, he delivered the coup-de-grace, a two-handed slash to the back of his knees, bringing him to a kneeling position, before driving the sword, point-down, into his neck.

Picking up a fallen heater shield, Harry backed himself up against a cart, as he was surrounded by the rebels, who by now had recovered their confidence upon seeing the slight size and apparent lack of age of their assailant. Now he was unhorsed, Harry himself was feeling a distinct lack of confidence.

The first attack came from a man carrying a short axe, who swung overhead at Harry, who brought up the shield on his left arm to block it while repeating the stomach-level slice, with results. By now the leather underclothes for his chainmail were soaked with sweat, and the splashes of blood on the chainmail were beginning to seep through. He didn't have time to be squeamish, and thanks to the Dursley's neglect, a lack of education on what were apparently normal morals for children meant he was rather less affected by what he was doing than anyone his age should have been.

However, the swift dispatch of their comrade meant the others weren't going to underestimate him. Harry bulled his way forward, slashing at the arm of the largest of the men, while slamming his bodyweight behind his shield against the smallest of them. It worked, he broke out of the semicircle, pausing for a second to drive home the sword into the man he had pushed to the ground before running for his horse.

He knew even before he was halfway there that he wouldn't make it. He could hear the carthorses who had broken free being used to chase after him, and the footfalls of those who had eschewed horses. Turning to face them, he hunched behind the shield, lowering his body as one of the rebels on horseback charged him. The smaller profile and tensed muscles allowed Harry to suddenly move, right in front of the charging horse and pierce the side of the rider with a sword-thrust, unhorsing him, and if the crunch of bone was any indication, putting him permanently out of the fight.

Turning back to take the next attack, Harry's eyes widened and he raised his shield as a Dane Axe descended towards his head. It was a crushing blow, dealing an immense shockwave that made the shield ring like a bell. He felt the axe land on the upper half of the shield, above his arm. Then it twisted and he felt a shot of agony through his arm as his wrist snapped. Narrowing his eyes, he moved around as the man turned to charge him again. This time, Harry didn't try and block the attack. He swayed out of the way of a clumsy swing and slashed the stomach of his attacker as he approached, then dealt another stroke to his flank as he drew level with Harry.

What felt like a ton of flesh crashed from the saddle onto him, sending them both to the ground. The thunder of hooves, a flash of red... It was all over. Harry nearly screamed in agony as he used his left hand to lever the body off him. The red... scarlet fabric. The coat of arms of King Henry.

The bodyguard of the King charged, ploughing through the rebels, dispatching them left and right with sword-cuts and spear-thrusts. Levering himself to his feet, Harry, despite the intense pain, raised his shield again to cover his torso and the lower half of his head, and readied his sword for another attack, should it come.

It was unneeded. The fight was over in seconds, the cavalry charge routing the rebels, leaving many slain. The King himself rode over to where Harry stood, slowly letting his muscles relax.

"Ah, my young siege-master, you must have fought well." the King nodded, gesturing to the dented shield and blood-streaked sword in Harry's hands.

"Twelve, I killed twelve. Well, eleven and one to my horse." Harry chuckled humourlessly; "I think my left wrist is broken, I would not mind the care of a physician if you have one."

"Can you ride?" he was asked immediately.

"I think so." Harry nodded, and within moments, King Henry was dismounted and and Harry was lifted into the saddle to take his place.

"I would not have someone injured fighting against something caused by my own foolishness regarded as anything less than the hero of the moment." the King grunted at the questioning look he was given.

"I did what was right, instead of what was easy." Harry shrugged.

"Aye, now come, it is several hours to Abertawe." Henry urged.

Mercifully, by the time the physician was mending the broken bone, his patient had passed out from exhaustion.


	23. Crusader: Master of the Siege

**1171, a castle on the Ulster border, Ireland**

Ireland was littered with castles. The Normans built them, the Irish-Norse 'natives' built them. Oh, and the Normans also had a habit of destroying those built by the latter. Harry was lying lazily in the back of one of the siege carts in the edge of the woodland, watching the spectacle of the attack. Archers on both sides sniped at each-other, a bonfire lay to his right, a hundred yards away, blazing fiercely. This cast a section of the forest into shadow, where the Norman archers lay in hiding, taking pot-shots at anyone so stupid as to put their head above the line of the battlements.

Harry mentally calculated the position of a trebuchet, the amount of ballast in the counterweight and the angle of release needed if he was called upon to assault the castle. The trebuchet was something that he himself had taken down designs for after a visit to France where he had come upon innumerable references to such machines, and indeed, spoken with crusaders who had encountered them used by the Ayyubid armies.

He was broken from his thoughts by the thunder of hooves approaching from the direction of the camp and the bonfire. Rising from the back of the cart, Harry's hand fell to the sword by his side. Ever since the ambush in Wales, he'd been on edge, so if this was a sortie from the castle to destroy the siege equipment, he'd happily meet them, sword in hand.

"Halt!" called the lead rider, slowing the other horsemen.

Relaxing as he recognised the voice as that of the king, Harry climbed onto the bench of the cart and dropped to the loam, strapping his sword-belt about his waist.

"Siege Master, I grow impatient and wish to see this castle's defences thrown asunder." said the King, riding up, allowing Harry to see a grin on his face.

"I was thinking you might sire." Harry chuckled; "Evening is well-progressed, but by dawn, I can have a war machine assembled that should hurl rocks with such force as to crush the walls."

"How many men do you need to provide the pulling power for launching rocks?" asked Henry, puzzling him for a moment before he realised the king assumed the weapon he intended to use was a mangonel which both used torsional energy in ropes on a windlass beam at the base of the throwing arm and the force of dozens of men pulling on ropes attached to the arm to project the rocks.

"None sire, only the crews to erect the machine and to load the rocks." Harry shook his head; "This is a new machine that has travelled across Asia and Europe, I believe this is the first time it shall be employed in these isles."

"That is good, I look forward to a demonstration, and certainly a reward for the engineer who ends this siege." the King concluded; "Mayhap a knighthood."

"Sire, I doubt I have the right bloodline, and none of the right education." Harry replied.

"Knights are far more often born than made. Fools are far more often born than made." Henry replied; "I must depart, but I will return at dawn to see how my new weapon progresses."

Harry shook his head at the almost childish glee on the monarch's face before beginning to saddle up his horse. He needed to rouse the crews.

* * *

First a single beam was laid flat on the ground. Then in two channels cut into it, another two beams were laid at ninety degrees before being secured together with massive metal bolts. Slid down the length of the two beams were to iron clamps that fitted perfectly onto the wooden beams, and then placed in the upper half of these two clamps, each received a vertical beam. Then with further clamps and shorter lengths of wood, supports were placed from the extremities of the three beams lying flat on the ground.

Under Harry's watchful eye and constant instructions the workmen attached two more iron clamps with circular holes in them onto the top of the vertical beams and drove through them the circular beam which would act as the axle of the catapult. After checking the fit was loose enough for it to turn freely, and that it was lubricated, they pulled it back out and raised the throwing arm of the war machine, which at the right point, had a hole cut in it for the axle to go. Then more bolts were produced to fix the axle and the throwing arm together.

Then the empty bucket that would hold the ballast for the counterweight was attached to the short forward part of the throwing arm and then ropes attached to the upper end of the arm. It was brought down slowly as the ballast was added to the bucket, completing when the ropes held the throwing arm fully down and the weight in the bucket was about a hundred times that of the projectiles.

Finally, Harry himself took one end of the sling and, with a couple of nails, attached it to the underside of the throwing arm, and then screwed to the very end of the arm, a bolt which would carry the other end of the sling until it slid off at a certain angle, catapulting its projectile at the target.

It was shortly before dawn as Harry snacked on part of one of a large number of pheasants that the off-duty bowmen had been courteous enough to supply them with, that the jingle of armour and the thunder of horseshoes had him look up from calculations scratched on a piece of parchment.

"This is the machine?" asked the King as he rode up, looking up and down the trebuchet.

"It is sire, I just await the cart with the stones in it, at which point the attack awaits your orders." Harry replied; "I have already done some crude aiming that should land the stones around the weakest point of the wall, right at the centre, where all the weight rests on it but without the strength from the towers."

"Good good, I believe I do see the cart coming." Henry stated, jerking his horse around.

Harry dashed over to where his was grazing and leapt into the saddle. Galloping over to the cart, he urged the carter and his horses up to the war machine as the King massed his knights in the treeline, returning as, under Harry's careful watch, the trebuchet was loaded.

Dismounting, both King and adolescent went to the sling end of the catapult, where one of the crew handed Harry a large mallet to drive out the pin holding the arm down. Harry weighed it in his hand before offering it to the King;

"If it pleases Your Majesty to launch the first rock." Harry grinned, gesturing to the pin, which when driven out of its housing, would release the arm.

The King mockingly bowed to Harry and took the hammer, delivering an under-hand swing at the pin, which smoothly launched it from the housing. The arm of the trebuchet whipped up, driven by the force of the counterweight. As it reached the right angle, one end of the sling rode up the pin on the end of the arm, and slipped off. That released the sling, hurling the rock at great speed towards the castle.

Narrowing his eyes, Harry followed the trajectory of the missile, suddenly losing hope as it seemed not to be falling fast enough to hit the wall. Then it began to tumble downward. He began to regain hope for a moment before it ploughed into the battlements, sending rock flying in all directions. The crashing of stone inside the walls made him think that the walkway behind the wall had probably been damaged or destroyed.

"Grab the rope!" he yelled; "Pull down the arm. No, wind it under a horizontal beam and attach one of the carthorses to it. We'll get a quicker reload."

The crew brought up one of the carthorses and dragged the long trailing rope from the end of the arm down, under a beam. It reached just far enough to be tied to the horse's bridle. They quickly drove the horse away, dragging down the arm against the counterweight.

"Unscrew the sling pin three full turns!" Harry ordered, as that would bring the threaded screw out a little more, meaning that the moment of release would be a few moments later.

Heads were beginning to appear over the edge of the battlements, and with a gesture towards a group of archers, King Henry had them firing devastating volleys of arrows.

"Here, you take the next shot." Henry said, handing Harry the hammer.

With another rock rolled into the sling and the pin unscrewed, Harry checked the horse was released from the catapult before dealing a sharp tap with the mallet. The arm once again whipped up, bowling the rock at the walls. This time it landed plumb centre and the wall began to bow inwards with the force.

"Once more, once more and it falls!" Harry yelled.

Swiftly the horse was once more brought up and attached to the rope. They brought the arm down against the weight of the counterweight and drove the the holding pin into place. Then another rock was rolled into the sling, and after hooking it over the sling pin, he stepped up to the release.

Dealing it another sharp tap with the mallet, he once again sent a rock bowling through the air. It hit dead centre for the second time, first driving a single block of stone out of the bowing wall. Then it gradually began to tumble, as if in slow motion, lump of rock after lump of rock began to separate and crash into the dusty pile of rubble that the wall had become. Surrounded by infantry, the knights charged the breach under a hail of arrows fired to keep the enemy's heads down.

"Kneel." instructed the King, drawing his sword.

Harry cast aside the mallet and fell to his knees, feeling the flat of the blade fall on his right shoulder.

"You are loyal to the crown, do you swear this?" asked Henry.

"I so swear." Harry replied.

"You serve the crown well, We see fit to confer the knighthood of Our Realm and the Lordship of the Manor of Bennedene upon you." the King intoned, laying the sword on Harry's left shoulder before raising it and bringing it down on his back in a stinging slap; "Do well to remember that a knight serves the weak, the poor and the needy, not his own treasury. It is something few remember. Maybe you will be different."

"Your Majesty." Harry nodded.

"Rise, Sir Hadrian."


	24. Unspeakably Marvellous

Tapping the surface of the glass case containing Fido, his pet amoeba, Unspeakable Hunter sighed. Being bounced around the timeline after an accident involving fifteen bottles of Everclear and a box of Timeturners, he was used to being busy. However, he had nothing to do.

The fifteen-foot-wide jellyfish-like creature with rows of jagged teeth in its gaping mouth, stinging tentacles and the ability to spit venom flung itself at the glass, a ten-foot distance. He chuckled fondly at the mutated carnivorous amoeba, moving to the immense glass tank containing a large amount of water, some ornaments and a Megalodon shark, coincidentally named 'Jaws'. He smirked, remembering the last time the Minister had come down trying to take over the Department of Mysteries, he'd nearly ended up fed to Jaws.

Being Master of Death had upsides and downsides. His pet amoeba and megalodon was an upside. Immortality was a bit of a downside, though it was useful during the years he was rebuilding a Timeturner after accidentally blowing himself into the past, because dying then would be an irritation.

"Boss!" called one of the Unspeakables, dashing into the room and, with practised ease, sliding under the hail of spellfire sent at him.

"What." asked the sepulchre voice of the Chief Unspeakable.

"Sir, one of the deities of Asgard landed in New Mexico about an hour ago, we don't know why he or she is there, but readings say his or her power is significantly reduced." replied the Unspeakable nervously, knowing the rumours about the boss-man feeding people who displeased him to his pet amoeba and megalodon.

"Fucking Asgardians. At least it gives me something to do." sighed Hunter, his voice going from the sepulchre to its normal slightly husky baritone; "Get me Unspeakables Raven and Fey, combat gear, now!"

Under his hood, the junior Unspeakable paled. Raven was known for nearly killing anyone who touched her collection of literary tomes, and Fey was simply sadistic in her use of magic. However, he nodded sharply and swept out.

Sighing, Hunter opened a cupboard in one of the walls and pulled out a pair of boots, a vest and several leg and arm guards made from a dully-shining green leather, a set of metal guards for his legs and arms, a chainmail vest and a gleaming silvery-metal cuirass with a gold sunburst in the centre.

Throwing off his Unspeakable robes and stripping down to dark-blue joggers and a long-sleeved t-shirt, Unspeakable Hunter was revealed. A man of around six feet tall with a mop of messy black hair, twinkling emerald eyes. He pulled on the basilisk hide guards and vest over his joggers and t-shirt. Then on went the boots, the chainmail vest and then the cuirass. Finally, he pulled the robe back over the ensemble and flipped up the hood. Under the robe were enough knives and guns to start a small war, as well as his battle sword, a hand-and-a-half bastard sword, and a duelling Espada Ropera.

Drawing the thin-bladed rapier, he twirled it around a couple of times, grinning at the perfect balance and minimal weight of a perfectly-made sword.

"You called?" drawled a female voice from the entrance to his study.

While Harry, Unspeakable Hunter, wore a mottled dark-blue robe, Fey wore a simple black hooded cloak, tunic, hose and boots which allowed her to blend into the darkness anywhere, and Raven was clad in a royal-blue dress with a studded leather cuirass and boots, the hood of her cloak also casting her face into shadow. Raven was armed with a longsword while Fey had two daggers visible in her belt.

Fey had been an enemy who he had effectively enslaved with enchantments, but he had never used them to do anything more than rein in her worst tendencies. Raven had long been a close confidant and friend whose life he'd saved by pouring his own into her, binding them together.

Despite having released his enchantments on Fey five-hundred years before, she'd never left their side... or bed.

"Indeed Morgana, it seems that the Asgardians have decided to chuck someone down here again." Harry rolled his eyes; "I want to find out what the hell they're doing, possibly neutralise them or otherwise 'request' that they bloody well stop using this planet as a playground."

"Why don't we try diplomatics instead of going in cursing anything that moves?" asked Raven.

"Rowena, these are Asgardians, their whole culture revolves around beating each other up and beating their chests." Morgana replied contemptuously; "At least we have the infrastructure in place in America after the incident with the Royal Marine who got turned into the raving monster."

They collectively shuddered, they'd all seen, done and been involved in some pretty strange and horrifying things, but that was up there with the best.

"Business faces." Harry warned, going back to the sepulchre tone.

The other two snorted as they swept out of the office into one of the many hallways of the Department of Mysteries Special Operations complex under the Antarctic. Morgana, under her hood, was tall, thin, pale and held herself with predatory elegance, her jet-black hair when loose, hanging to the middle of her back, sea-green eyes and a usually expressionless face, except for a slight smirk, full of contempt and arrogance.

Rowena was as tall, but had more accented curves, slightly wavy dark-brown hair and grey eyes, sharing similar aristocratically sharp facial features. While she was aloof-looking, none of Morgana's arrogance showed on her face, there was a graceful elegance about her.

"New Mexico." he barked, stepping onto a circular platform in the centre of a room with a couple of Unspeakables sat at control consoles at the edges.

"Right boss." replied one of them, rapidly typing at a keyboard.

A moment later, a glass cylinder descended from the ceiling and covered them, and then everything went icy cold for a second and flashing green rings appeared around the three Unspeakables.

* * *

Emerging from a small abandoned warehouse in the New Mexico desert, three rather conspicuous figures suddenly were rendered invisible.

"_Do we have direction?_" Rowena asked over their headsets, ever practical.

"Fifteen miles south-west from here was the impact site." Harry replied, glancing at his watch; "However, we've just encountered an issue I hadn't calculated for when building that machine and designing how it transports us along time-streams... we left England at zero-nine hundred hours but due to the fact it sends us east, not west, in England, it's zero-two hundred hours, or five o'clock in the evening here."

"_Genius. You utter imbecile._" sneered Morgana.

"Come on, it's a prototype which was only finished a couple of days ago." he protested.

Morgana sighed in exasperation and activated the broom enchantments on her clothes, rocketing into the air. Harry and then Rowena followed her, fanning out slightly so that they'd be able to see as much as possible. It was an old tactic they'd developed many years before.

"_Fire to the east, small village, smoke, flames._" Rowena barked.

"Check it out." Harry ordered, sighing slightly.

A few moments later, she reported back;

"_I'd say it's worth coming down here, if you include civilians, some kind of metal monster spitting flames and throwing cars around as suitable levels of destruction._"

Harry, Rowena and Morgana all regained visibility and burst into clouds of grey smoke, swooping down on the village like pillars of some kind of phantom mist.

"Rowena, civilians, Morgana, back-stab." ordered Harry aloud as he hit the ground running.

Morgana sank it the shadows like a wraith as Rowena tried to get everyone out of the path of what was probably going to be a brutal battle. Harry slowed to a lope as he approached the twenty-foot monolith, like a suit of armour but made of hundreds of strips of metal overlapping each-other.

It glared down at him, and a moment later, a jet of flame was spat from the head of the automaton. Harry sensed it to be normal fire projected by compressed gas and, drawing the Elder Wand from a sheath in his sleeve, simply vanished an inch-thick layer of the air directly in front of him and maintained it thus. The burning gas couldn't go through a vacuum, so it simply burned up where there was oxygen.

Immediately, Harry was on the defensive as a massive metallic arm was swung at him. He ducked under the first swing and flung up a shield against a downward punch. A sound alike to that of thin glass shattering was all the warning he got to dive out of the way as the gleaming metal slammed into the road.

Twirling his wand, stone vines sprang from the concrete and wrapped themselves around the monstrosity. Promptly, the seams between the plates of metal lit up with flames for a second so intense that it caused the stone to fracture and collapse. Cursing under his breath, he turned a nearby car into a massive knight made from scrap metal, which promptly snatched a lamppost and swung it at the automaton.

The blow caused an off-tune bell-like note and bent the lamppost, while causing a noticeable indentation on the automaton. A second swing was intercepted by the hand of the metal monstrosity, which wrenched the scrap-car-turned-knight forward and ripped it limb from limb.

Harry hadn't been still. He'd flung a rope curled up his left arm around a sign above a diner, the bolas at the end firmly securing it to the sign. With a running start, he'd launched himself forward, off the ground and swung up there. Just as the automaton ripped apart the scrap knight, he'd flung the rope-and-bolas at its neck and, as it reached up and grabbed the rope, allowed himself to be wrenched over to it.

The rope swiftly vanished up his sleeve, to be replaced by a massive single-headed morning-star flail which he twirled easily before bringing it down in a crippling blow which could turn a man's head into so much mincemeat. It crumpled the metal of the automaton. Bringing it down a second time, he wedged it between the bent plates and wrenched it out, causing even more damage.

A blur of spiked metal hissed through the air as he spun it again. And then the automaton reached over its shoulder, grabbed and threw him away. Harry embedded the morning-star in its hand and gripped grimly onto the shaft of the weapon until the head of the flail came loose. He was propelled, faster than was comfortable, straight into the wall, the basilisk hide and mixture of metal armour absorbing a good amount of the impact.

"SECTUMSEMPRA!" Harry hissed, the verbal incantation lending more power to the spell.

As streaks of energy raced at the metal monster, it sensed them and brought its damaged hand up to catch them. The hand was reduced to scrap metal by the curse which slashed dozens of deep cuts, buckling the metal. Harry had to dash out of the way as it heaved a lamppost at him like a javelin, embedding it in the wall against which he'd been leaning.

With his wand held in a firm but relaxed grip and the sinister spiked flail twirling easily in one hand, Harry grimly approached the automaton. As it turned to face him, Morgana separated herself from the shadows and hurled a francisca throwing axe which embedded itself in one of the seams in the back of the right knee before sinking back into the darkness. He grinned as it began creaking ominously with every second step.

He ducked between its legs and brutally smashed the morning-star into the back of its left leg and rapidly moved back as it leapt around, trying to hit him. However his movement put him back behind it and allowed him to build up momentum with the flail for a second strike which followed the first into the back of its knee.

Placing his wand into its sheath, Harry gripped the shaft of the flail with both hands and delivered a crippling blow to the front of the left knee of the automaton before disapparating as he heard a whistling time. Holding the disapparition in place for just a few seconds, retaining a ghost-like quality, he watched a massive rock propelled by a siege engine spell smite the metal monster with enough force to knock it onto its metal ass and crush deeply into the already battered shoulder.

Morgana flung herself off a nearby building and, using all her momentum, plunged her longsword into the chest of the monstrosity and, with years of paranoia, drew it out and stabbed again. It went limp, and she looked up toward Harry, triumph on her face under her hood.

"MOVE!" he screamed, dashing towards her.

The automaton simply swiped her away, coincidentally straight into Harry. Luckily none of their various weapons injured each-other, but the impact velocity of the two into a building heavily concussed Morgana and outright rendered Harry unconscious, basilisk-hide armour or none.

Rowena was far too composed a person to let a scream of rage loose, but she calmly strode down the street toward the automaton, a firm scowl on her face. When it lunged at her, she took a single step to one side and brought her huscarl's bearded battleaxe down in a two-handed grip towards its arm. Goblin-wrought steel against Asgardian alloy was a difficult fight... except for the number of enchantments and substances on the former.

The axe embedded itself in the metal, delivering an immense shockwave to both the wielder and the victim. There was a reason Rowena had been the daughter of a Saxon chieftain and a warrior princess in her own right. Calmly, she hooked the axe onto the shoulder of the metal monster and wrenched herself up onto its back, hewing deeper into the metal of the shoulder, where Harry had pulverised it, in a series of vicious blows.

Its left shoulder was ruined between the first blow of the scrap-knight, Harry's attempts and her own attack. Rowena hooked the tip of the axe around a bent sheet of metal as the automaton bucked furiously, trying to throw her off. Resolutely, she stayed attached, and when it finally ceased, she tore the weapon out, ripping the metal again. This time, it ripped up another lamppost, and caught unprepared, Rowena was thrown away by the vicious back-handed blow it dealt to her armour.

Through her dizziness and aching ribs, she watched as horrified silence descended, a lone blond stepped forward, taking long, steady paces towards the automaton. Before she could watch what happened, darkness descended on her eyes, robbing her of consciousness

By the time her vision returned, the blond was standing tall, gripping a war-hammer and wearing scale armour, the automaton reduced to scrap. Morgana swept over, and in a rare moment of emotion, said;

"You're still alive. Thank God, it saves Harry a lot of paperwork."

"Happy birthday to you too Morgana." Rowena groaned, standing up, applying a healing spell to her ribs and head, before reflexively doing the same to the other witch, knowing they went through far too many scrapes together; "Where's Harry, I saw him get taken down."

Morgana cocked her head in the direction of the blond and the civilians.

Harry was a sinister shape, swathed in darkness, out of place in the sunlight of New Mexico. The easy twirling the morning-star in his hand didn't lend his appearance any approachability.

"When did Midgard become a playground for the grudge matches of the Asgardians!" he hissed as the civilians looked at him and the suddenly-stilled flail in fear.

"Hail friend, you have been a part of a great victory, one which shall be told for many years before roaring fires!" replied the blond jovially.

Harry scowled at him, before realising it was pointless.

"Sorry, I didn't hear a reply in that. I'd really like to find out _why _a piece of Asgardian engineering landed on this planet and began destroying everything!" he demanded; "And why during the period that the three best operatives of my department were getting our asses kicked, you were standing around like a bunch of imbeciles?"

"Lay off, he's just had a traumatic day!" protested one of the women.

"I had a bad day. Sunday the second of September sixteen-sixty-six. I burnt London to the ground after setting fire to my laboratory over some baker's shop." Harry deadpanned; "Now, any possibility of getting my answers so I can either pretend this never happened or wipe your minds of my existence and pretend it never happened?"

Several people glanced at the weapon in his hand which was, rather ominously, starting to swing again.

"Thor was thrown out of Asgard, his powers stripped because he decided to invade Jotunheim with us." said another of the women, wearing plate-armour.

"Moron." sighed Harry; "Right, so what's with your scrap-metal monster."

"It's a vault guardian under the control of the Allfather." she explained hastily as the morning-star began spinning even faster, turning into a blur. Having seen him using powers beyond those of normal Midgardians, she was not going to try starting a fight with him.

"Right. So the old man's evidently gone senile since I last saw him." Harry growled, eyeing them. ; "Raven, can you fix these imbeciles up! HEIMDALL, OPEN THE DAMNED BIFROST OR SO HELP ME GOD, I'LL FEED YOU TO MY PET SHARK!"

Injecting pure magic into his voice, he was a bit annoyed when it took nearly five minutes for the rainbow bridge to open, by which time a couple of men in suits had arrived. Calmly, Harry stepped into it.


	25. WWII: Pilot and Playboy go to War

Balanced easily on the pitching deck of HMS Glorious was a man, tall, lithe with a mop of jet black hair. Spoken of in the same hushed awe as names such as Woolf Barnato, Benjafield or Birkin, the Bentley Boys. The same breath as aviators such as John Alcock and Arthur Brown, who flew across the Atlantic non-stop in a 1919, or Schneider trophy seaplane pilot Orlebar, or even aircraft design geniuses Reginald Mitchell, Geoffrey de Havilland and Tommy Sopwith.

He was a mystery to the public. Appearing out of obscurity in 1925, he'd taken up rather public habits. Racing a series of three Supermarine seaplanes, a handful of de Havilland DH.88 Comets, he'd achieved considerable success alongside fellow racers, elevating Britain to a highly respectable position within the constant competition of speed and pioneering of the air.

But he hadn't limited himself to that. Rumours of a garage with half-a-dozen Bentleys, a handful of Rolls-Royces, an Alfa Romeo 8C, Bugattis, luxury German Audis, Mercedes-Benzes and Maybachs were afloat in high society. He did nothing to deny them and frequently campaigned the more powerful cars in races.

Hadrian Potter. He was a quiet person, given to enjoying his privacy, as well as being one of the most skilled pilots amongst the British people. During the 1930s, he'd been taken on tours of aircraft factories around the world, and thanks to that and an eidetic memory, the Air Ministry had access to the plans for dozens of German aircraft types. They really had thought that Britain would be happy with them campaigning across Europe like a demented Atilla the Hun. As if.

* * *

'It had been a full twenty years since he'd last really known peace.' was running through Harry's mind at the moment that the ship's siren began to wail.

He'd done his 'duty' to the wizarding world. He'd killed Voldemort within an hour of his resurrection during the late summer term of 1990, and made sure it was permanent. To make it even more permanent, he made sure to drain him and every one of his minions of their magic. That had been a bit of a headache, absorbing that much. And for some reason, he'd stopped ageing about seven years later, three weeks after he'd received a gift of a stone on a ring and a wand from his old headmaster.

However, before that event, he'd gone straight to Thames House and MI5. It hadn't been hard to work out that the Security Service had known about the wizarding world from the ULTRA decoding of Axis transmissions. They'd happily taken him on and he'd served in the SAS for twenty years, seeing combat in Desert Storm, Bosnia, Kosovo, Desert Fox, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq another time.

But a few weeks after he retired after twenty years' service, Draco Malfoy had tracked him down and engaged in a running duel with him. It resulted in the remaining Malfoy being thrashed, but in the process, a Timeturner that said ferret was carrying had exploded, casting them both eighty-five years in the past. Remarkably accepting of his new state, Harry had quickly finished off the annoyance, dealt with Tom Riddle junior pre-emptively with an impotence hex on his father and then got on with doing his own thing.

After spending a while as a reclusive playboy, racing driver and pilot, he'd signed up for the RAF and put in three months as an instructor on the Hurricane before being posted to RAF Digby where the first combat of 46 Squadron occurred. In a single fight with himself coming in high and two other pilots going in low to form a pincer movement, Harry had become an ace, shooting down five twin-engined Heinkel float-planes. The other two had accounted for a pair each.

* * *

_**October 1939**_

"_Rapier, this is Digger Controller, ten plus bandits bearing zero-two-zero, angels zero-three, distance about five miles." came the voice of the controller, a slight public school drawl typical of RAF controllers._

"_Digger, I copy." Harry responded, glancing to the two Hurricanes off his port wing. Squadron Leader Phil Barwell had given him command of this patrol, while Pilot Officer Plummer was flying number three. "Rapier flight, climb to angels zero-four, make visual contact and attack from each side. I will come in from above."_

"_Roger boss." was the reply from Plummer._

"_Wilco." said Barwell, not commenting unfavourably on his plan._

_Opening the throttle from a comfortable cruise to full military power, he eased the Hurricane's nose up. The two-blade de Havilland propeller crippled the fighter's performance, at least compared to what it could be. However, a climb to three-thousand feet after a five-hundred foot shipping-protection patrol wasn't hard._

"_Tally-ho, bandits bearing three-forty, twelve twin-engined aircraft, about five-hundred feet below." reported Plummer a few long moments later._

"_Break left and descend, Phil, take the closest side, Plummer, go to the far side." barked Harry after a second._

_They pulled up while turning onto their wing-tips. Barwell dived down first, Harry second while Plummer kept arcing over before descending several hundred yards on the far side of the formation. Flicking off the safety catch for his eight .303 Browning M1919s, he eyed the fast-approaching specks, their green camouflage contrasting against the grey-blue of the sea. Thin fuselage, long cockpit canopy, glazed nose and floats under each of the radial engines. Heinkel 115 float-planes, an aircraft he'd actually flown. They were slow and not particularly manoeuvrable._

_Simultaneously, from three directions, the Heinkels were under attack. Harry saw Plummer rake the cockpit of one of the aircraft, it fell away in a fatal dive into the sea. Barwell put a burst straight into the petrol tank and his aircraft blew up spectacularly. It was his performance that was the best. He fired a short burst into the fuselage just ahead of the tail of his target, tearing it off and, as the gun camera watched, it plunged into the sea._

_He followed this up with a second short burst into the wing of a second, just outboard of the float. With the massive drag of the engine and the float, along with its struts, the float-plane tumbled into the sea. Coming out below the formation, Harry slammed the stick back into his stomach and came out upside-down facing the remaining eight Heinkels as they turned away to their starboard. Barwell had done the same and they shared a kill as their guns tore into the first aircraft._

_So far, Harry had fired for three seconds, expending about fifty-five bullets from each gun, or a total of four-hundred and forty of the bullets in total. Standing on his rudder pedal, he slid the aircraft to port, straight onto the tail of another of the float-planes. It didn't take even a second to remove said tail from the Heinkel, it was horribly fragile._

_Releasing the rudder pedal, he flipped onto the starboard wing-tip and pulled back as the Heinkels continued banking to head back to base. With a few degrees of deflection, he squeezed the gun button and raked his fourth kill with bullets. It plunged towards the sea, an inferno trailing behind it. Not even releasing the button, he let the bullets fall into the aircraft immediately beside where his fourth kill had been._

_Evidently there were some significant munitions on board as the Heinkel blew up with a shockwave which dislocated something in his engine as the smell of glycol filled the cockpit and the temperature gauge began to rise alarmingly. He was turning towards a sixth when they finally got their fingers in and opened fire. Jinking away from the streams of tracer, Harry saw the temperature continue to rise terrifyingly._

"_I've got problems, returning to base." he stated over the radio._

_Probably out of some sense of comradeship, and the knowledge that the North Sea was a cold place, the other two stuck close to him the whole way, even though they probably could have wiped the rest of the Heinkels off the face of the Earth without too much trouble._

* * *

"FORTY-SIX SQUADRON RAPIER AND SABRE FLIGHTS, ENGINES RUNNING!" rang out a voice from the speakers all over the superstructure of HMS Glorious which was cruising up the Ofotfjord at thirty knots.

Aircrew dashed from the former battlecruiser turned aircraft carrier and leapt onto the wings of their aircraft. At a slightly more sedate pace, Harry strapped an extra belt around his waist, carrying a pair of Ginunting, Filipino short swords, and a Colt M1911 he'd bought on a visit to America.

Climbing up onto the wing, he strapped on his parachute and stepped into the cockpit, feet on the seat before, holding onto the edge of the forward canopy, sliding himself into place. He turned on the electrics, checked the battery had sufficient power, made sure the radiator flap was open.

Then going down to his left side, Harry tested for full and free movement from the elevator and rudder trims before setting the former to neutral and the latter fully right to counter the takeoff torque of the propeller. Quickly locking the friction nut on the throttle, he tested for full and free movement from the RPM control and selected for the engine to draw fuel from the reserve fuel tank.

After setting the supercharger, he checked that the magnetos were off, the pressure heater was off and the lights were off, checked the setting of the G meter was at 'zero', checked the generator failure light and then checked that he had two green indications for the undercarriage, down and locked. The radio was at the right frequency as proved by the short, sharp barks of conversation he could hear through his helmet.

Flight instruments, check and set. Engine instruments, check and set. Fuel pressure lights for main tanks and reserve tanks working. Fuel gauge for each tank checked. Harry pumped down the flaps for a moment and brought them back up, killing a bit of hydraulic pressure. The brakes were on.

He primed the engine several times before pressing the starter, watching as three propeller blades passed his windscreen before roaring into life, spitting smoke and small flames from the exhausts.

"_Potter, you copy?_" asked Squadron Leader Cross, the CO of 46 Squadron.

"Loud and clear boss." he replied, a slight shake of his head as he thought of the one-time Parachute Regiment Colonel who had served his entire career reduced to a Flying Officer of the Royal Air Force.

"_We're heading up to Skanland with your flight and mine to see about suitability for the rest of the squadron._" Cross continued over the radio.

"Roger." Harry replied before switching to speak to his flight; "Bill, Jake, we're flying to Skanland. Takeoff and rendezvous at angels zero-five, two miles bearing three-five zero."

"_Copy_."

"_Wilco._" came the replies of his wingmen.

They were a mere two miles from the temporary airfield at Skanland, sat in the mouth of the Ofotfjord as all six aircraft launched from the pitching deck of Glorious. The flight to Skanland was uneventful, but as Harry, Bill, Jake and Henry, one of Cross's wingmen flew in a finger-four formation to cover the other two landing, they watched as two Hurricanes dug their undercarriage into the wet ground, ripped them off and pitched nose-first into the ground.

"Oh dear, it appears the CO has crashed." Harry commented.

"_Why did I leave my camera on the ship?_" grumbled Bill.

Harry reached into a stowing position in the cockpit of his Hawker Hurricane and pulled out a map, quickly scanning it for a diversionary airfield, because Glorious wasn't large enough to land their aircraft on, Skanland wasn't usable and anything around Narvik was in the hands of opposing forces.

"Divert to Bardufoss, steer bearing zero-five-three, about fifty miles." he instructed.

_Bollocks._

* * *

**Evening, 27th May 1940**

"Nice job Bing." Harry commented, stepping up onto the wing of Cross's Hurricane as it taxied up at Bardufoss the next day, a new propeller attached, but some noticeable reminders of his 'incident' present. "You didn't even manage a minor ground-loop this time."

"Shove off." he grunted, shutting down his engine and smacking the release on his harness.

"Anyway, I've got a _rodeo_ sortie planned for the dusk hours, two flights heading towards Narvik to reconnoitre enemy forces and cause as much trouble." added Harry before stepping down from the wing. He fully intended to get a bite to eat before flying, it wouldn't be anything too heavy though.

* * *

About an hour later, he was strapped into his Hurricane, with Bill and Jake in their own aircraft. Using a rather shorter series of checks given the fact that the aircraft had been running earlier that day, Harry went through them quickly. Brakes, trim, flaps, contacts, hydraulic pressure, petrol, undercarriage and radiator. Then again, the Merlin roared into life, the airscrew passing his windscreen a couple of times before the engine caught.

Soon they were in the air, or more specifically, a couple of hundred feet in the air, skimming the rocks of the spectacularly beautiful mountains lining Norway's fjords. However, they didn't have time to marvel as the three three simultaneously spotted a convoy on the road on the side of the fjord they were following, covered by a single Fieseler Storch, a small high-winged aircraft capable of taking off and landing on tiny areas, but also incredibly slow.

"I'll take the Storch and the lead vehicle, Bill, fall back and hit the rear of the convoy. Jake, take centre." Harry ordered brusquely as they closed in.

The three aircraft separated, Harry levelling out before diving down at a steep angle while the other two headed in at shallower angles. Closing to within a hundred yards, where the Fiesler ceased looking like some strange insect, he flicked off the safety switch and pressed the gun button, firing for just a single second. Despite having his guns synchronised to two-hundred yards, the one-second burst was devastating.

First, his burst tore into the cockpit, certainly killing anyone within. Then, with the glass around it, the frame of the cockpit ceiling, including the wing spars, crumpled. The wings folded upwards before shearing off, taking the struts and the undercarriage legs with them. On their way off, one of the wings hit the tail, removing both the fin and the planes and wrapping themselves around the fuselage.

Then the whole pathetic bundle tumbled to the earth and blew up as it hit the first truck in the convoy it had been flying over. As it seemed he didn't need to bother with the first truck. Instead, Harry steepened his dive into an almost vertical one and flipped over, finishing a half-roll. He let fly and flew the length of the convoy, spraying it with machine-gun fire. He felt blast after blast rock the aircraft as his bullets ripped into the soft-covered trucks, some blowing up with munitions on board, some simply catching fire as his fire sought out their fuel tanks.

"Rapier one, two, climb and break to port and starboard! Biplanes half-a-mile rear." Harry calmly rattled off as he spotted three silhouettes coming down towards the Hurricanes which were flying toward him.

He quickly identified the single-engined biplanes as Arado AR 68s, with a streamlined shape, independent spatted undercarriage and a large intake well back under the engines and swept, staggered wings. Closing a bit over seven hundred yards in a few seconds, Harry let off a two-second burst at about a hundred yards before slamming the stick into his stomach.

The biplane looked like it imploded just before the massive engine in front of him obscured his vision. Climbing like a homesick angel, Harry gained several thousand feet before standing on the rudder bar. Close to the stall, the Hurricane essentially fell over and dived back toward the earth, its pilot quickly feathering the propeller.

Too late. The other two had climbed a thousand feet before parting, diving in opposite directions down the valley walls and caught the remaining two biplanes from each side and they were now splattered across the valley. Harry kept his neck on a swivel, looking for any more aircraft.

"Rapier flight, climb to angels zero-three and resume formation." Harry ordered, pulling out of the dive and climbing back up to just below the cloud base.

"_Rapier one, coming up on your starboard side._" replied Bill, the most experienced one of the two.

"_Did you see that boss, I got one!_" exclaimed Jake.

"Good lad, now shut your trap and close up." barked back Harry with no real venom.

"_Got us some more custom, two-o'clock, low. Train._" Bill stated a few minutes later.

Harry waggled his wings to get a good look. They were in a fairly good position.

"Turn and descend to port, Bill, follow me, Jake, rear." he ordered.

The Hurricanes began their diving turn, going to port. Emerging three-hundred and sixty degrees, as well as two-and-a-half thousand feet later, Harry pushed the nose down, onto a nice straight stretch of railway line. At a hundred feet off the deck, he checked his mirror. His wingmen had both followed with a distance of a thousand yards between them. They were doing a hundred-and-seventy-five knots or about two-hundred miles-per-hour, meaning that each of them were ten seconds behind the person in front.

As the locomotive came around a bend in front of him, Harry was bracketed with black bursts from several twenty-millimetre Flakvierling batteries on the train, each carrying a four-barrel anti-aircraft platform. Not friendly then. Fighting the Hurricane to counter the blast from the exploding shells, he brought the Hurricane even lower. Fifty feet or less.

Harry opened fire as soon as the engine steamed right into the centre of his reflector gun-sight about five-hundred yards away and continued firing, standing on the rudder pedal to skid the tail to port and the nose in to starboard, raking the train. The quad .303 Browning M1919 light aircraft machine-guns in each wing spewed bullets at an incredible rate, puncturing through the boiler of the engine and taking huge chunks of the internal tubing with it to create immense shrapnel damage on the exit. Then the wooden carriages came into the line of fire, spikes of wood flying everywhere in conjunction with the bullets themselves.

Pulling back on the stick, he turned onto the starboard wing-tip and pulled away. The entire attack had taken just a few seconds. He circled at two-thousand feet as, at ten second intervals, Bill and Jake dived down and had a go at the train, eventually leaving it steaming, burning and derailed, the boiler riddled like a sieve and the carriages a charnel house. Somehow their air-to-air fighting felt so much cleaner.

"Climb to angels zero-three and resume formation. Tell me if you see anything else worth blowing up, but otherwise we're heading back home." Harry called over the radio.

* * *

"Any joy?" asked the Sergeant Armourer, a gruff Scot, as he climbed up on the wing of Harry's Hurricane outside the dispersal at Bardufoss.

"The boys each got an Arado biplane, I got one as well as a Fieseler Storch." Harry replied, pulling off his helmet and unclipping his parachute; "We strafed a road convoy and took out a train, had a close run-in with the train's flak but I don't think there's much damage."

"There better not be." was the response.


	26. WWII: In Memoriam - The Battle of Norway

**9th June 1940**

"Rapier two, close up." Harry barked over the radio.

Silently, Jake moved up until he was nearly hugging the wing-tip of Harry's Hurricane. They'd just launched from HMS Glorious as the ship made way for England, as none of them felt the ship was safe without an air patrol. Seven more Iron Crosses adorned the side of Harry's fighter, making his total kills fourteen. The five Heinkel He-115 float-planes, a Fiesler Storch and a Arado biplane were followed by two Junkers Ju52 troop-transports on a fighter sweep two days later.

After an uneventful four days, on the Second of June, while out on a dawn patrol, the three of them had come across a flight of four Messerschmitt Bf-110 heavy fighters escorting ten Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers. They had dived into the formation, Harry picking off two of the heavy fighters in a shallow dive, while the other two had each hit the other '110s. With the escort destroyed and Bill having also destroyed one of the Stukas on the dive, they'd circled round and torn into the remainder. All nine had been destroyed in the ensuing scrap, three being credited to Harry before he'd run out of ammunition.

Ground attack fighter sweeps had also continued, with 46 Squadron proving to be an immense nuisance to the enemy, daily their marauding Hawker Hurricanes strafing convoys, trains, machine-gun nests and harrying the Luftwaffe in the air, challenging any attempt to regain air superiority. The outdated Fairey Swordfish biplane bombers carried by the carrier had also proven themselves, appearing out of the huge gorges of Norway's coast, accompanied by the Hurricanes to hit anything unfriendly that moved.

Harry pulled himself out of his thoughts and kept his head on a swivel. The thick mist wasn't conducive to their task, but he'd stick to it. Then he fixed his eyes on a shape slipping through the mist, four o'clock low.

"Seaplane, unidentified, four o'clock." he stated; "Circle starboard, one-eighty degrees and descend one-thousand."

"_Roger boss._" came the chorused reply.

They spread out a little and dived, banking around to starboard, coming down behind the unsuspecting aircraft. It was a monoplane with a radial engine and two large floats on pylons. Harry throttled back, allowing Jake to take the lead. The kid was only eighteen, but already an ace pilot, with a great deal of skill but limited confidence.

Jake screamed into the attack, a three-second burst demolishing the tail-fin and large glazed canopy of the aircraft that Harry had identified as an Arado 196 shipboard reconnaissance aircraft, used on steam catapults on battleships for spotting. However, just as the stream of bullets ripped into the rear of the floatplane, a spray of tracer left the rear-facing machine-gun of the Arado, slamming into the attacking Hurricane.

"_Boss, major issues. Coolant system is fucked!_" Jake radioed.

"Bill, escort. Get him back to the carrier or back to land, I don't care which." Harry ordered sharply as he climbed, spotting a silhouette of a large aircraft, four-engined aircraft circling the area about four-thousand feet above them.

Opening the throttle fully, he climbed, in a spiral, six-thousand feet, all the time circling to keep his eyes on the oblivious heavy aircraft in view. Flicking off the safety on his guns, he gently dived after it just as it turned to nearly face him, travelling at one-sixty degrees to his . Then all hell broke loose as a waist gunner let a stream of tracer at him, big streaks of red from a heavy-machine gun, probably a thirteen-millimetre, followed by a hail of similar bullets from a twin gun turret on the top of the fuselage.

Harry ignored the tracer, and the snapping noise as the supersonic bullets passed him. Closing to fifty feet, he still didn't waver, but pressed the gun button. Eight Brownings roared as they spewed a stream of bullets straight into the glass of the cockpit of the Focke-Wulf Condor.

Diving, he felt the aircraft shudder as the engine momentarily cut, followed by a loud BANG as a shell punched into the fuselage, ouch. Throwing open the cockpit canopy, Harry leaned out to see a tattered hole in the fabric skinning of his fighter. He turned and followed the Fw-200, snapping a few photographs with the gun-camera as the aircraft plunged into the sea. Not bad for such a powerfully armed aircraft against a lightly-armed fighter.

However, there was a problem. The Arado monoplane that Jake had shot down was used exclusively as a warship's catapult-launched reconnaissance aircraft. Harry grunted irritably and slammed closed his canopy.

Pressing on his push-to-talk for the radio, he opened his mouth to speak before there was a crackle of sparks and an acrid smell filled the cockpit. Immediately releasing the button, he cursed silently. The twenty-millimetre shell from the under-fuselage gondola cannon of the Focke-Wulf had fucked his radio.

Diving to try and get Glorious in his view, Harry spotted the silhouette of a huge ship approaching at speed. He was just about to throttle back and try and enter the circuit when he spotted huge gun turrets, two forward, each with three guns. Sticking the nose down, he jammed the throttle wide open and dived for the deck as the ship began blazing away with inaccurate flak fire. He spotted Glorious, listing and on fire, raked with shell-holes. And on the far side, a second battleship, identical in most ways to the first.

Between them, the destroyer escorts lay, riddled with holes, burning. They were lost.

Narrowing his eyes in anger, he made a cold calculation. Glorious too was lost. She had lost speed, and the immense armament of the twin battleships would spell her end. His bullets would have no effect on the turrets. Then he spotted the open bridge and the warfare control installations on the mast.

Hunching himself down behind the armour plate, he rolled in on the battleship, three-hundred miles an hour, five feet off the sea at most. Then suddenly he jerked the stick back, and then slammed it down. The aircraft leapt upwards and then dived. Harry let off a burst of bullets at the bridge, then another at the mast full of radar equipment before diving back to five feet. He pulled around when suddenly, he was bracketed by bursts of gunfire from all along the ship. Staccato flashes lit up the side and suddenly, the Hurricane was pierced with thousands of holes, caused by shrapnel.

Letting fly with a long burst, right down the side, he snarled behind his oxygen mask as the light anti-aircraft installations were filled with flying bullets, shrapnel and ricochets. But the Hurricane was dying, he could feel the airframe groaning, the shredded skinning flapping in the airflow.

Then the breeches clacked, empty. No more bullets. There was nothing he could do... almost. Turning the aircraft around to face the battleship, he jerked the canopy open and tried to gain some height. Fuck, vertical control wasn't present. The engine coughed and spluttered before ceasing to turn over.

Harry feathered the three-blade propeller that had replaced the two-blade De Havilland unit. He was lucky the sea was calm, as he set down the Hurricane on the water, it didn't dig in, and he snapped off his harness, quickly grabbed his Browning Automatic Rifle in its watertight leather case, along with his copy of the squadron log and slung them around his back before climbing out. Looking down onto the wing, he noticed the film box for the gun camera was loose, held on only by a nut.

Kneeling down, he unfastened it from the aircraft, which was still floating. That quickly went in the rifle bag. Looking up as he heard a droning noise, Harry nearly smiled at the irony. An Arado 196 floatplane alighted on the water and taxxiied up next to him, the lone pilot pushing open his canopy.

Taking it as the invitation that it was, Harry swam the twenty feet from his sinking Hurricane to the float of the Arado and up to the cockpit. The moment he had a chance, he drew the Colt M1911 he kept holstered under his jacket, racked the slide and shot out the radio.

"Guten nachmittag mein freunde." Harry said with a predatory grin, holding the gun a few inches from the pilot's head; "Fliege ein-neun-vier mass."

He had the pilot at gunpoint under orders to fly one-nine-five degrees. That should take them to around the Shetlands where he could either force the pilot to land or bail out.

* * *

_In Memoriam HMS Glorious and her crew._

_In Memoriam HMS Acasta and her crew. In Memoriam HMS Ardent and her crew._

_In Memoriam Hawker Hurricane 46 Squadron, Royal Air Force._

_In Memoriam Fairey Swordfish 823 Naval Air Squadron._

_Finally, In Memoriam Gloster Gladiator 263 Squadron Royal Air Force and 802 Naval Air Squadron._

_These men died fighting the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. May we learn of mistakes from the past and never let such a conflict be repeated._

_'…of ships sailing the sea. Each with its special flag or ship-signal. Of unnamed heroes on the ships, of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach. Of dashing spray and the winds fighting and blowing.' Ralph Vaughan Williams: Sea Symphony._


	27. A Pilot's Tale: Aces Old and New

**1993, International Air Tattoo, RAF Fairford, England**

"You ready?" Harry radioed.

"_The question is not am I ready, but are you certain you are old enough to see out of the windscreen?_" was the slightly sarcastic reply.

"Or are you too old and arthritic to fly?" he countered.

He was circling about five miles south of RAF Fairford in a customised Supermarine Spitfire IX with the twenty-one hundred horsepower Rolls-Royce Merlin One-Thirty from a de Havilland Hornet. Flying in close formation with him was another of his aircraft, a Messerschmitt Bf-109 'mutant'. Built out of bits, it had the eighteen-hundred horsepower Daimler-Benz DB605 from a 'G-6' model, complete with a thirty-millimetre 'Motorkanone' firing through the spinner, a twenty-millimetre cannon in each wing and two thirteen-millimetre machine-guns on top of the cowling.

The pilot was an elderly gentleman, tall, well-built, with brushed-back hair under his flying helmet and the thinning remains of a masterwork of a moustache. Painted on the side of the cockpit was a cigar-smoking Mickey Mouse.

"Full power. Use your methanol-water injection." Harry ordered, levelling out the wings.

"_Jawohl__, Herr Potter._"

"One." the two pilots in their aircraft opened up their throttles; "Two." the noses dipped and a stream of white smoke began to leave the Messerschmitt's exhausts, the vaporised water-methanol. "Three." from about fifty feet away from each-other, side-by-side, the two aircraft rolled inwards and the pilots pulled back on their sticks. Right in front of the crowds at Fairford, the two aircraft, turning, flew within feet of each-other.

* * *

Giving the throttle a last burst just to lift the aircraft very slightly, nearly neutralising the rate-of-descent, Harry eased it onto the tarmac gently, not eliciting even the slightest complaint from the tyres, just as _Generalleutnant_ Galland lowered his aircraft onto the tarmac five feet behind and twenty feet to the side of the Spitfire.

The crowd was silent. Even Air Vice Marshal Johnnie Johnson and _Generalleutnant _Gunther Rall in the commentary box were silent. They'd just watched the ace and the man who was a child in comparison spend ten minutes idly ripping up most of the laws of physics and what you could and should do with an aircraft.

Taxiing past airliners, military transports, helicopters and jet fighters, everyone turned to watch the mutant Spitfire and 109 roll past, ungainly on their long legs, and yet reminding anyone watching that they could, at the pull of a few levers, become what had once been two of the most deadly weapons of war ever built.

Harry had locked open the canopy as soon as he'd entered the circuit, and as soon as he'd landed, extended the aerial for one of his radio systems up, out of the cockpit and tied a Jolly Roger flag to it.

Grinning as the pirate flag billowed in the prop-wash of the Merlin, he followed the RAF ground-crewman who was marshalling him into a space. Steering by easing the brake on the port wheel with the bike handle-like brake lever on the far side of the stick and the rudder pedals to direct it to the that wheel, he swung the aircraft around to port. Then the crewman crossed his arms, so he released the rudder pedal he was pressing on and applied the brakes fully.

Fuel cocks off, he pushed the throttle open fully, burning away all the fuel in the fuel lines as he turned off the magneto switches on the left side of the cockpit. Swiftly, the Merlin burnt through what was left and wound down, the swish of the propeller blades slowing and the ticking of cooling metal suddenly being the loudest noise in the cockpit.

Pushing back the canopy, he reached out as his fitter for the airshow weekend leapt up on the wing and handed him a bottle of chilled water. Gulping it down, he then reached up and peeled off his flying helmet and put it on top of the rear-view mirror on the outside of the windscreen edge, replacing it with a horribly misshapen and faded RAF peaked cap. It also looked like the top had been re-stitched at some point. Probably after he'd thrown it into an endurance-test version BAE Harrier's engine to see what condition it would come out in, and in what condition the engine would come out in.

Reaching out, Harry released the side door and, after twisting the release on his harness, dealt it a hefty blow, loosing all the various straps. Putting his hands on either side of the mirror, he pulled himself up to stand on his parachute. Stepping out onto the wing, he dropped onto the tarmac and climbed straight into the back of the Mercedes-Benz 600 'Grosser' which pulled up next to the aircraft.

Galland climbed in moments later, each silently reflecting on their flight as they were whisked off.

On the far side of a shower and a change of clothes, Harry dropped into an armchair in one of the main residential buildings on-base, waiting for his 'wingman' for the display weekend. A few minutes later, as he was flicking through a classic car magazine, the big German emerged from a room, wearing a very smart business suit.

"What on earth is that!?" he demanded.

Harry was wearing trainers, scruffy jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt.

"It's easier to blend in when you're not wearing the scruffiest RAF uniform ever worn. Besides, I left my hat in the car." Harry replied with a smirk; "Come on, lets head back down to the flight-line."

Galland chuckled and stretched out a hand as, shaking Harry's hand firmly. It was an unspoken understanding between the two pilots, a strange form of comradeship. One young man who'd never had to kill in the sky, and one who had defended his country in the sky with every fibre of his being. Even on the wrong side.

* * *

"-And I came in from five o'clock high, three hundred knots, he pushed the stick forward, I think instinctively, trying to out-dive me. I overshot him, turned and found that he'd pulled an Immelmann, he was behind me, above me." Harry described as he walked past a German Air Force C-130 with Galland.

"Between Erich and Gunther, it is hard to choose which of them is _the_ best of the '109 pilots." the German replied simply; "Other than Marseille, who could not be matched, it was a toss-up between the two to choose the better, I would not be confident to say which of the two was the best of those who remained."

Harry nodded slowly, he'd first visited Celle a year ago in the Spitfire on his way to Berlin, in need of fuel and food. His lunch had been interrupted by one of Galland's aces, Hans-Ekkehard Bob, who he had the distinct pleasure of calling a friend. After going to Berlin, he'd bagged several weeks of long-overdue leave and returned to Celle. Flying a variety of manoeuvrable light aircraft with various old fighter pilots, he'd learnt the pilot's trade, and after finishing putting together the Bf-109 earlier in the year, he'd flown mock-combats against a number of the veterans, with Hartmann and Rall being the most skilled of them.

"Aunty, please can I sit in it?" pleaded a pitiful sounding voice as they approached the parked-up warbirds. Harry glanced over to see a blonde woman, probably no older than he was with a small boy clutching one of her hands by the port wing-root of the Spitfire.

"Maybe one day when you have your own." was her slightly tired reply.

"Or you could climb in right now." Harry offered, interrupting them.

"Somehow I doubt 'they' will let us." the woman countered.

"I get to do what I like with my aircraft. Perks of ownership." he stated.

"What. You're serious." she said, lifting her sunglasses to stare at him.

"Why does nobody around here take me seriously?" Harry wondered aloud; "Is it the t-shirt and jeans?"

"I believe, Herr Potter, it is due to the fact you still have spots." interrupted a smirking Rall.

Galland, who had perched himself on the starboard wing-tip of the '109, nearly fell off with laughter.

"Come on, I'd expected someone to jump at the opportunity to sit in the Spit." said Harry, ignoring the _other children_.

"Please, please!" cried out the child.

"This is my sister's kid, Max." the woman introduced; "I'm Amy."

"Harry Potter." he greeted them; "Come on, Amy, it'd probably be easiest if you get in first. Just climb up onto the wing, stand on the seat, hold the edge of the windscreen and slide yourself in."

Max ran over to him, allowing his aunt up onto the wing, and she stepped into the cockpit before lowering herself in. Harry hoisted her nephew up and onto her lap.

"It's small." commented Max.

Harry barked a laugh.

"Sometimes it feels like wearing an aeroplane." he answered.

"How does it start?" Harry was asked immediately.

"You turn on the battery master switch first." he replied, reaching into the cockpit and flicking the relevant switch; "Now the gauges are working, you press _this_ button to get the indicator for the undercarriage, showing you it's locked down. The handle to your left, you wind that forward so that the aeroplane steers right, because the engine makes it want to go left. Elevators are already set."

In quick succession, he pressed the undercarriage indicator switch, set the rudder trim.

"Now you can see in front of you a gauge with 'brakes' written on it. In the top-left corner, there's another reading which tells me that there's enough air to apply the brakes. The brakes are already locked on, so we pull up the fuel cock lever." Harry continued, reaching down to below the booster coil and starter switches and jammed the lever up and uncovered the switches. "These two switches on the left, I have to check they're off. Throttle, quarter of an inch open, propeller set and the idle cut off, which controls the fuel supply, is off. The next bit you'll need to do Max."

"What!" exclaimed the boy.

"See the black lever with the ball on the top, just wobble that around, it pushes fuel around the aeroplane." Harry explained it simply, making sure he did as told. "Right, that's enough, I'll turn on these two switches over here, then you press the two buttons I uncovered, but hold back the stick all the time with your other hand. Let go of the two buttons as soon as I tap you on the shoulder."

"Prop clear!" shouted Rall, who had been listening from nearby.

The boy reached forward and, using two fingers, pressed the booster coil and starter switches. A slight whine was followed by two loud swishes as two of the four propeller blades swung past the windscreen. Then Harry jerked the throttle slightly, injecting slightly more petrol into the engine.

The Merlin caught, and with an earthshaking roar, came to life.

* * *

Harry sat in the cockpit, the engine ticking over as he stared at the expanse of metal filling his view. Directly in front of him were several feet of Rolls-Royce Merlin and a four-blade propeller idling at a bit under a thousand revolutions-per-minute, while beyond that, was PA474, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight's Avro Lancaster.

Reaching for his Thermos flask of coffee, he checked the engine temperature, pleased to see the two radiators were doing their job, cooling the engine sufficiently that he wasn't running any risk of overheating. The same probably couldn't be said for the veteran Battle of Britain Spitfire IIA sat behind him. He however had a less powerful, and therefore less stressed, engine unlike the customised Mk. IX. The same went for the Hawker Hurricane IIA at the back of the queue.

Taking a sip of his coffee, Harry sighed in contentment. The running joke at Stirling Lines was that his coffee was made with one teaspoon of boiling water and one jar of ground coffee.

"_Bravo-Bravo flight, take off in one minute intervals, enter circuit and orbit._" radioed the controller; "_Lancaster, say one, Pirate, say two, Battle, say three and Hurricane, say five. Confirm._"

"_Lancaster, Bravo-Bravo one, received loud and clear._"

"Pirate, I copy, number two." Harry replied.

"_Battle, three confirmed._"

"_Hurricane, four roger._"

"_Bravo-Bravo flight, proceed to runway zero-nine-zero._" came the next order from the controller.

Harry waited for the Lancaster to begin rolling forward before easing off his brakes and giving the throttle a slight poke with his index finger to increase the RPM of the propeller a few hundred rotations a minute. The Spitfire pulled away, with him using the wheel-brakes to weave left and right so he could see his path ahead of the immense engine.

The afternoon had a slight pall cast over it by an earlier incident. Literally. Two Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 'Fulcrum' fighters had collided, resulting in one being cut in half and bursting into flames and the other being fatally damaged. Both pilots had banged out, but one aircraft had nearly impacted a number of parked aircraft.

Now, the sunset ceremony with the lowering of the RAF standard from the flagpole on the parade ground, with various units parading and the usual bigwigs taking the salute. The three aircraft of the BBMF and Harry's IX were rolling out to formate and perform flybys for the parade.

Turning on his stopwatch as the Lancaster eased on and off its brakes at the runway threshold, Harry eased on his own, placing himself where the Lancaster had been. Then the stopwatch buzzed and he opened the throttle fully, releasing the brakes. With the rudder trim set to counter torque-swing he still exercised the the rudder pedals a touch as the aircraft bounded forward, the throttle lever sliding to where it was jammed against the end of its travel.

Easing the stick forward, Harry felt rather than saw the tail come up, and then the speed of the air over the wings become sufficient that the weight came off the wheels. Smacking up the undercarriage lever, he kept the aircraft level at about twenty feet until he'd gathered sufficient speed. Reaching behind his head, he slammed shut the canopy of the Spitfire and followed in the direction that the Lancaster had flown.

Finding it flying circuits of the airfield, he eased the Spitfire in behind the Lancaster's tail, idly noticing that whoever was in the rear turret was tracking him with the horizontal movement of the turret and the vertical traverse of the quad Browning .303 light-machine guns.

"Bravo-Bravo One, Bravo-Bravo Two, do you mind me turning off my engine so that I may maintain your speed." Harry sarcastically requested over the radio.

"_Bravo-Bravo Two, Bravo-Bravo One, I somehow think that would be a colossally bad idea._" came the reply from the Lancaster' radio operator.

Within a short time, the other aircraft had joined up with the formation and they simply circled, waiting from the signal of the ground-controller at the parade to perform the flyby.

"_Bravo-Bravo flight, form up and roll in, ETA sixty seconds._"

The aircraft joined up, Harry on the starboard wing-tip of the Lancaster, with the Hurricane on the opposite side and the other Spitfire falling in the rear just below and behind the bomber's twin tailfins. They banked around to starboard and opened their throttles, entering a shallow dive. They had practised the previous day and Harry had a couple of white marker-pen marks on his airframe, one on the canopy showing where the dorsal turret of the Lancaster should be and one on the engine nacelle below where the nose turret should be, allowing him to triangulate his position.

Spotting the parade ground as he led the formation as starboard marker, Harry kept an eye on the altimeter and the Lancaster as they levelled out. His stopwatch and the growing parade ground in his gunsight showed that they were exactly on time. The burning orange ring on the gunsight were set so that the moment that they turned on direct course for the parade ground, it would fill the extremities of the ring. Then at ten seconds out when they'd pull out of the shallow dive, the parade ground would extend to the extremities horizontal and vertical lines which protruded from the ring. He already knew the approach speed, so he'd set the sight so that the top, bottom and sides of the ring and the crosshairs would be exactly filled by the parade ground at set times. It worked and they were perfectly on time.

Easing back on the stick as the edges of the crosshairs filled the parade ground, he checked the Lancaster's position, confirming it was in the right place. In his rear-view mirror, he saw the Red Arrows, as planned, rolling in, seven directly behind them, the remaining two joining the BBMF formation. Then suddenly as they roared over the parade ground, the Reds performed the 'Vixen Break', the seven behind them pulling around in a hundred-and-eighty degree fan.

Then the Spitfire flying rear marker pulled back, climbing vertically. Harry slammed his aircraft onto its port wing-tip and pulled back, turning ninety-degrees. He passed within feet of the Lancaster's tail as he flipped over onto the tip of his starboard wing. In a second, there was a roar and a flash of green and brown as the Hurricane turned on its starboard wing and pulled back. They roared away, the Lancaster flying straight on and the fighters fanning out.


	28. Crusader: Death After Dinner

**May 1199, the Royal Palace and Fortress of the White Tower, London**

The _clink-clink-clink_ of chainmail echoed as Harry strode down the halls of the Tower of London behind Geoffrey FitzPeter, Earl of Essex and Constable of the Tower. He observed the defensive features from the inside, as he had done from the outside, making three circuits of the fortress before riding in. Truly, it was an impressive fortification, and yet had nothing on his own fortress.

Built on a series of plateaus up a mountainous hill, all sides were approached by a steep rocky cliff face, then hewn into the very rock itself before the fortress, was a star-shaped wall, which allowed covering fire from any of the spurs towards the others, meaning to approach one would catch yourself in a crossfire with the one you approached and the one adjacent. The fortress itself began with a gatehouse which was housed in a square keep of its own, and you could only approach it on a path between two spurs of the star.

The gatehouse keep was set in a wall that began in the side of the hill, populated with a series of squat, round towers on either side of the gate which gave a perfect field of fire and at the same time did not have the weakness against siege weapons that square towers had. You would then approach a double-towered inner gatehouse, loomed over by an immense square tower attached to the front of the main keep. The second gatehouse led to a maze of tunnels, some tall enough to ride a horse through, but all twisting and easily defended.

One of them emerged within the curtain wall of the main keep, which spread out backwards towards the sheer cliff face dropping down hundreds of feet, containing the castle home, attached to which was the looming tower. Inside was enough space for himself as Lord, two-hundred and fifty knights and a thousand assorted sergeants, infantry and archers housed there on a permanent basis.

The back of the castle had the sheer drop of hundreds of feet and four great square towers where he'd mounted ballistae, trebuchets and other assorted long-range weapons.

The Tower of London was not that grand, limited in size by the city itself. It was not a building he would personally enjoy besieging, simply because its status would risk a reprisal on an enormous scale. Two 'wards', the curtain walls in other words, a moat, and the famous keep itself.

"Announce the Count Hadrian of the La Bana." instructed the Constable to one of the two guards on the door they had approached.

"Count Hadrian of La Bana in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Constable of the Tower, my Lord the Earl of Essex, Geoffrey FitzPeter." announced the guard, throwing open the door.

"Geoffrey, please, do sit." ordered the man seated at the head of the table, who though darker of hair, was similar to his father who Harry had named a friend; "And the Count Hadrian, please to my right." he added, gesturing to an empty seat at his right-hand side. "You have obviously met the Constable, opposite you is Henry Fitz-Ailwin, the Lord Mayor, to your left is the Lady Alicia de Coubray, a ward of the crown, and next to the Lord Mayor is my lord the Earl of Pembroke and Marshal of the Realm, William Marshal"

"We have met Your Majesty." Harry said with a slight bow, shooting a look at William.

"It has been many years though. I heard tell that Guy de Lusignan is dead, is it true?" the Marshal demanded; "It is rumoued that in his depression at the loss of Jerusalem he committed suicide."

"Five years ago. I found him ruling Cyprus, excusing all ill that he performed as being in the service of Our Lord. And yet he was strangely swift to try and silence me when I confronted him. He was never as skilled with a sword as me, and in attacking me indeed did commit suicide." Harry said lowly; "But it is ill-befitting to discuss death and killing at the table, I would prefer more pleasant conversation."

"At least I now know my uncle is avenged." said William, looking satisfied; "I am curious as to why you were first identified as a pilgrim, not arriving in a way befitting of your station?"

"I crossed the Mediterranean and made speed through France, not wishing to be accosted by the many who I have offended during my time in the Holy Land. I have over a thousand soldiers at my disposal, but I do not wish to bring them into this country without the permission of its monarch, no matter my own station." Harry replied, inclining his head to the king as food was brought in and laid on the table.

They broke out knives, very similar to the fighting daggers he carried, and wooden boards were employed where plates would one day be used. The food was almost exclusively meat, and it was noticeable that Harry, unlike the others, did not pick out one thing at a time, but took a couple of portions of meat, some of the few bits of fruit and vegetables on the table and laid them on his plate before beginning to eat.

"What is the Holy Land like? Is it truly as glorious as in the tales?" asked Fitz-Ailwin.

"No, the sand is horrific, the slightest wind lifts a sheet of the stuff up and blasts it at you. I took to wearing a thin scarf of silk given to me as a gift by a Saracen lord over my face, so that I could see and breathe in the sandstorms, and when I didn't need it, simply lowered it. In the day, because there is no water near the surface to take the heat of the sun, the sand itself heats to an incredible level, that you would burn if you touched it. Then at night because there are no clouds to hold the heat in, it leaves quickly and rapidly becomes colder than the fiercest winter. No, it is not glorious." Harry chuckled; "Yet I stayed there for twenty-five years. I left for Jerusalem in Eleven Seventy-Four, I was but nineteen years old then, and I only left for a short visit to Cyprus in Eleven Ninety-Four before returning. I did what I could to secure the remains of the Kingdom and its remaining fortresses before considering returning to England. Thus it has taken me seven years from the signing of the truce between His Majesty's brother and Saladin to my own return."

"I note your arms bear the crosses of the Knights of Saint John, are you a member, taken the vows?" asked King John.

"Aye, I am a member. Though I never took the vows with the agreement of the Grand Master because poverty wasn't going to work, money is needed for fighting, chastity is all well and good but I hold a title and under some expectations, I must have an heir, and obedience is never something I've ever been good at, I usually just do my own thing." Harry said after finishing a slice of chicken impaled on his knife; "I took a vow to protect the weak, protect the order's interests and to defend the Christian kingdoms of the west and the Holy Land. I served in the Hospital of Jerusalem for a year before I came to the attention of the young Baldwin the Fourth after a caravan I was in was attacked by Saracens and we fought back. After that, I kept fighting, built a large fortress over the main road from Acre to the Sea of Galilee, kept fighting. The only time I have ever met my match in a swordsman was duelling Saladin himself at the Battle of Montgisard, he gave me this scar." said Harry, tracing the scar down past his eye.

"Such a feat of arms as to fight the infamous Sultan and live is worthy of a reputation." John commented; "Though I am curious why a rich man leaves his castle and lands for this country after twenty-five years?"

"The Kingdom of Jerusalem's days are numbered. It will not last another century. There are too few native barons, and with conflicting ambitions, conflicting loyalties, all packed into a small country, the Christian side will tear itself apart." Harry answered; "On the outside, we are surrounded from the north, the south, the south-west and the east by Muslim countries, all of whom would happily make war on us if they believed they could win. As your brother showed, a crusade, no matter how great, is still not able to make great inroads on taking a land so far from home, and surrounded by enemies. I left because I could no longer stand the petty arguments of the self-entitled so-called 'nobles' who proclaim their rule of the nation. It would not be the first time I struck down someone who, in a fit of arrogance, challenged me."

"It is truly that bad in the Court of Jerusalem?" asked John.

"A meal at court in Acre is rarely complete without one duel to the death." Harry said with a cynical smile; "It allows one to keep one's hand in with a sword."

"I shall have to arrange for you and William, who has something of a reputation as a swordsman, to fight before us, it would be exceedingly good entertainment." laughed John; "Yet I am sure you exaggerate."

"Not entirely. Duels were commonplace, grudges great in number and depth. Whether a death duel did in fact result in death wasn't certain." Harry shook his head; "I'll tell you of one rather memorable event at the Court in Jerusalem."

* * *

**July 1187, the Fortress of Sepphoris, the Kingdom of Jerusalem.**

"_...may we reign long and happily. Amen."_

"_Amen." chorused the assorted nobles, many more of duty than any belief in the 'long and happy' reign of the monarch, Guy de Lusignan, seated at the head of the table._

_The banquet had been thrown when the Crusader Lord Hadrian, Count of La Bana had ridden into the city with a host of five-hundred knights after a protracted defensive campaign against Saladin, who had renewed his offensive on the Kingdom of Jerusalem._

_They were sitting down to the meal when a rider dashed into the courtyard on horseback, nearly throwing himself out of the saddle and dashing over to Guy. The rider quickly handed the King a piece of parchment which he unfolded and read, one eyebrow climbing._

"_Saladin besieges Tiberias. We must make haste to relieve the garrison." he announced._

_Raymond, Prince of Galilee and Tiberius rose immediately._

"_We cannot. The town of Tiberias can be sacrificed. Saladin's army outnumbers us, I have seen it with my own eyes!" he stated; "If we draw them into besieging us here, we can destroy his army. We cannot if he draws us onto the field of battle, which is what he will expect us to do."_

"_Oh, and what would you do, accursed Tiberias, have you lost your spine?" demanded one of the nobles._

"_Sit down Tiberias!" ordered Guy as he began to reach for his sword._

"_Raymond is right." Harry said quietly; "We can march on Saladin, leaving here undefended. We can retreat to Jerusalem, letting the Saracen army have free reign over the land. We can stay here, hold out against the army, and whittle it down, bit by bit. He would have to split his attentions, and siege equipment between Tiberias and here."_

"_Be silent coward! God is on our side!" yelled another nobleman, causing Harry to glare at him with such venom that he nearly wilted in his seat._

"_Saladin makes a mistake, he places himself between the walls of Raymond's fortress and our army. He cannot make war with armies on two sides." announced a red-headed noble, one who Harry would happily see dead, Raynald de Chatillon; "He makes such foolish mistakes that I wonder if any but a true coward or a traitor to Christendom would do otherwise than to make war upon these infidels."_

"_We march on Saladin!" announced Guy; "Who here will swear loyalty to me and to the war we make?"_

_One by one each of the nobles offered their allegiance in the coming battle, save Raymond and Hadrian._

"_And what of you Raymond, Hadrian?" asked Guy._

"_To march from here to Tiberias, you must go from water to water. North-east of here, less than two leagues is Tur'an, which has a spring, thence to Hattin, it is a similar distance. From there you must go to Lake Tiberias and march south on the shoreline to come upon Tiberias." Harry said calmly, ignoring the question._

"_Do not seek to advise me on military matters!" Guy snarled, suddenly enraged; "Do you think me so stupid as not to think of such? It is merely four or five leagues to Tiberias, it would be faster simply to march straight there, with plentiful water on arrival. Indeed, we march there."_

"_Then I will take my leave, and that of my knights. For by the time you are drawn into the arms of Saladin's army and destroyed, I will take my men to defend Jerusalem from the results of your stupidity." Harry said, his voice hardening as he rose and made to leave the courtyard._

"_Halt! You will swear me allegiance."_

"_I go to offer your wife my condolences for your death and my services to try and hold back the results of your stupidity." Harry said coldly, not breaking his stride._

"_Then end him!" screamed Guy._

_One of the Templar guards drew a sword and raised it. Harry's bastard sword cleared its sheath and he dealt a ringing blow onto the steel of his attacker's sword, the vibrations going through both of him. With sheer strength, he pushed down until the Templar was on one knee, before driving one foot into the attacker's torso, bowling him over backwards. Not pausing for a second, he drove his sword into the gap in his armour between his helmet and the neck of his hauberk._

_His own horse was tied up just outside the courtyard, so he quickly pulled himself into the saddle and galloped away. Riding through the encampment outside the fortress, he roused his knights and vanished west in minutes._

* * *

"And it turned out I was right. Guy took some of my advice, but not enough, he should never have left the fortress. He did go by water, but was cut off from it by the Saracens, who slaughtered the Crusader army." Harry stated, taking a sip of the wine in the goblet in front of him.


	29. Irony of the Basilisk

Harry raced through the seemingly never-ending corridors of the Department of Mysteries. Strewn behind him were heaps of rubble from vicious curses launched both by him and the Death Eaters pursuing him. Neville, Luna, Hermione, Ron and Ginny were all unconscious, he'd stunned them and hidden them in a room to draw the attention of their enemies away from them, onto him.

Ignoring the way that the corridors ceased being tiled, becoming darkened caves, Harry raised a weak light on the end of his wand and kept running until he skidded into what seemed to be an immense hall. Curled at the centre was an immense statue of a basilisk with two smaller statues of robed humans attacking it. One had thrust a sword through the snake's throat, holding a mirror in his empty hand and the other, a distinctly female figure had embedded a Dane Axe deep in its flesh. But he had no time to spend admiring ancient carvings.

Settling behind the tail of the snake, as he'd found the room to be a dead end, Harry watched and waited. It didn't take long for the group of Death Eaters to arrive. Lestrange, Lestrange, female deranged Lestrange, Crabbe Senior, Goyle Senior, Mal-ferret Senior, Avery, Nott, Jugson, Travers and Rookwood.

Dolohov would have been joining them had in not been for the fact that he currently was residing in the Room of Time with a thousand glass shards summoned _through_ his body. The prophecy was no longer in Harry's possession, so what they were doing was futile. He'd hurled the orb through the Veil of Death, a fitting end given what he suspected it would say.

Avery barrelled straight into the room, at which point Harry moved so that only his eyes and wand protruded above the snake statue, launching a whispered blasting curse straight at Avery. It flew true, creating an immense shockwave which reduced Avery to a molecular level.

Not sure whether to be sick or not, Harry ducked behind the snake before retaliatory curses could been heard. Then there was a sudden crackling roar, as in lightning bursting nearby. He curiously peered over the snake to see Travers lying on the ground, small sparks crackling over him, his hair scorched off for the most-part, evidently electrocuted. One of tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber, stood on either side of Mal-ferret was about to advance.

"No, don't." Malfoy hissed; "Blood wards... yet there is only one person here, and he hasn't been here for long enough to set such a powerful set of them."

Harry had no idea what he was talking about.

"There must be someone, living, here who shares Potter's bloodline closely enough..." Malfoy hissed. Harry suddenly understood. Blood wards had to be anchored on a relative... and yet who was here.

He felt a faint wind brush through the huge hall, from sources unknown, but then noticed the robes of the two killing the stone basilisk lift slightly.

"Basilisk slayers..." Harry whispered; "Basilisk..."

He looked at the faces of the two slayers and realised they were both wearing crude crystal glasses, tinted a pink colour. For some strange, unknown reason, he couldn't register any details of the features he could see under the shadows of their hoods. Harry shook his head and reached into the internally-expanded pouch that he'd carried for several years. Inside was a small potions kit he kept stocked with healing potions... and mandrake restorative draught.

Arming himself with two vials of the restorative potion, he slid around the snake so that he still had some cover from the Death Eaters who were bombarding the shield, at the entrance to the hall, with curses. The first he reached was the woman, whose mouth was slightly open, which allowed him to pour a small amount of the restorative into her mouth. Slowly, it began to relax her jaw, allowing him to empty the entire vial into her mouth.

Grinning at the irony of the basilisk being petrified by its own stare, Harry moved over to the man. His mouth was shut tightly in a grimace. Frowning slightly, Harry contemplated what to do before ripping of his tie and soaking it in some of the restorative before gently using it to sponge the man's jaw until it ceased being petrified. That gave him room to pour the contents of the vial into his mouth.

Sinking behind the petrified basilisk, Harry watched as the two sank to the floor, the woman coughing and choking as her lungs breathed for the first time in... he didn't know how long. He drew his wand back out from his pocket and gestured at her, summoning her over and quickly performing a charm to clear the patient's airways that he'd learnt from Madam Pomfrey. Harry repeated the process with the man and slowly they recovered.

"Long are the years... since I have breathed air. The darkness is everything that I have experienced through time immemorial, why am I awakened?!" the woman demanded, her melodic voice entrancing Harry, finding involuntarily, secrets were slipping off his tongue.

"There are a group of terrorists, murderous rebels, after me because I had a prophecy sphere relating to me and their leader, who has tried to kill me repeatedly. I stunned my friends and hid them in a room, this is my battle to face, not theirs." Harry said immediately; "I threw the prophecy through the Veil of Death, so their effort is in vain. I woke you for help, and because I did not wish to leave anyone petrified when they seemed to have been battling a dark creature, such as the basilisk naturally is because of the way the maker must imprint a dark soul onto the creature."

"You know your stuff boy." grunted the male, hoisting himself up to draw his sword from the petrified snake; "Stay out of the way while we deal with these murderers."

"Wait..." the woman said, reaching out with pale fingers which she ran down Harry's face; "I am sorry..."

She swung her wand at him in her otherhand, and faster than he could react, a silver light burst from the tip, encompassing him, winding like a spider's web around his body. Harry felt untold agony, he arched his back in pain before collapsing in a shower of silvery dust which faded into nothingness, leaving no trace of him behind, he had vanished.

The woman sighed sadly.

"Morgana... he will be... I am... better for what you have done." said the man.


	30. WWII: Welcome to nearly France nearly

**10th June 1940**

Harry cursed as he stumbled in the darkness of the hallway at RAF Sumburgh in the Shetland Islands. He'd just been intending to get some sleep when an NCO had knocked on the door of the room he'd been issued and told him he was to report to the office of the base's Commanding Officer.

Finally finding his way to the door of said office, he rapped on it smartly, waiting for a 'come in' before pushing it open. He didn't bother saluting because he wasn't in uniform, but still in flying kit.

"Flight Lieutenant Potter." said the CO, a Navy man as he reached into a drawer; "We've got your prisoner under guard, and the same for his aircraft. I'm informed there has been a whip-round on the base for a purse for your prize."

He tossed a small bag of coinage to Harry, who opened it to find high-value coins into it. The base had been very accomodating, Bill and Jake had flown back and arrived before him, and they'd arranged a memorial service on the shoreline to those lost in the earlier battle.

"Furthermore we've analysed the gun-camera footage. Flying Officer Jake Sanger should be credited with an Arado 196 destroyed, and you with a Focke-Wulf Fw-200 Condor destroyed. We identified the vessels involved in the sinking as the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau." continued the CO; "And finally, a request from Fighter Command at RAF Bentley Priory for you, Flying Officer William Jakes and Flying Officer Jake Sanger to report to RAF Rochford, a satellite to RAF Hornchurch with immediate effect."

"And sir, how exactly do they propose we get there? Jake's Hurricane needs major work, Bill's aircraft is held together with sewing thread and prayers, while I have no aircraft anymore?" Harry nearly snapped back, his stress showing on his face. Being shot down was always unpleasant, especially by a battleship, add to that a six-hundred mile dash in a hijacked Axis aircraft in airspace controlled by Britain, and no sleep.

Slowly the CO reached into his desk and pulled out a key which he threw to Harry.

"Beechcraft Staggerwing, one with the supercharged Wright Cyclone. Look after it will you." he said tiredly.

Harry nodded and dropped the purse back on the table.

"Give a third to the padre. Put the rest into the base's mess bill." he said before walking out.

* * *

On the far side of four hours sleep, Harry loaded his rather meagre belongings into the Beech. He had a dozen combat knives of various designs, a .303 Browning Automatic Rifle, his Colt M1911, a .455 Webley revolver with the barrel cut down to four inches, a small amount of cash, and his copy of 46 Squadron's log book.

He sighed quietly. War was war, people would die. Checking the six twenty-round box magazines for the BAR, the six seven-round magazines for the Colt and the pouch of loose bullets for the .455, he made sure that the ammunition was all in good condition before putting it into the gun bag with the weapons.

A few of the tired pilots rose from the deckchairs outside the dispersal hut as the elegant biplane taxied up next to a line of brand new Supermarine Spitfire 1As with major propeller and radio upgrades. One of them ducked past the propeller as it wound to a halt and over to the door of the aircraft.

Three men dropped out, carrying flying kit, and one a bulging gun bag.

"James Leathart, CO 54 Squadron." introduced the pilot who had come over to the aircraft.

"Harry Potter, Bill Jakes, Jake Sanger." Harry introduced the three of them; "Formerly of Forty-Six Squadron."

"Oh?"

"Squadron disbanded to prepare for re-equipment with different mission-orientated aircraft." Harry smoothly cut across Jake who was about to open his mouth. Kid couldn't lie to save his life.

"Have any of you flown a Spitfire?" Leathart asked.

"A few times." said Harry while the other two shook their heads

"We're in dire need of pilots, lost too many in the retreat from France." Leathart grunted; "And somehow I think we're going to loose a whole lot more."

"Norway wasn't exactly a perfect holiday." Bill said sarcastically.

"Right, get your kit stowed. Flight! Get these gentlemen rooms!" ordered Leathart; "Get some chow once you've stowed your kit, then report to dispersal, I'll arrange a couple of aircraft."

A broad-shouldered Flight Sergeant who had been working on one of the Spitfires jumped down and gestured them over to a Bedford 'Queen Lizzie' lorry.

* * *

In his room, Harry looked up to see the Queen Lizzie pilot's transport lorry pull up. Sat on his bed, he pulled off his scruffy RAF jacket, wound a thick silk scarf around his neck and pulled on a fur-lined leather jacket and quickly levered his feet into fur-lined shin-length flying boots before tightening the straps up.

The life jacket, uninflated, went around his shoulders followed by his flying helmet's straps which he did up around his neck, he'd pull it on while at the aircraft. Grabbing his parachute pack, Harry checked he had his Colt and the Webley holstered under his jacket, that the knives he liked to carry were all in their specially-made pockets. Finally, Harry grabbed his Browning Automatic Rifle and a couple of magazines which he stuffed into the two stomach pockets of the jacket.

Zipping the rifle into the watertight bag he took everywhere with him, Harry hoisted it over one shoulder with the parachute pack hanging from the other as he headed out to the courtyard where Bill and Jake were climbing into the back of the lorry. Dumping his rifle and parachute on the back, he hoisted himself up into the back and slumped on a bench.

"Eat well?" asked Jake cheekily.

"Could be worse." Bill shrugged.

"Could be a lot worse." Harry confirmed; "D'you think it'd be too much to hope that we come upon some poor German while out getting familiar with our new aircraft?"

"Don't get your hopes up." said Bill.

"Morning lads." said another pilot, clambering onto the back of the lorry with his kit before introducing himself; "Phil Tew, Flight Sergeant. I heard you just got back from Norway, what's going on up there?"

"Not much, we've pulled out." Jake stated; "Cost the Germans a lot though, they lost a heavy cruiser, Blucher, to Norwegian coastal artillery, while the flying navy boys in the Orkneys took out a light cruiser and one of our submarines took out a second, while we bloodied the Luftwaffe who didn't at first seem to realise we were serious about this war and kept sending rather pathetic aircraft out. Eventually they got the message and we lost a few chaps to '109s, but we kept them on their heels the whole time."

"Things have been a mess down here, the Acting Squadron Leader's not exactly hugely experienced, we're losing pilots too fast, in late May, we went down from squadron strength to eight beat up Spits and little more in the way of beat up men." Tew sighed as he ran a hand through his matted hair; "You been to briefing yet?"

"No." Bill shook his head; "We were rather inferring a familiarisation flight."

"Damn, I'll give it to you plain then since somebody hasn't bothered. Dunkirk is over, the BEF is gone from there but there are still pockets holding out, including about ten-thousand in Le Havre and many times that in the Cherbourg to Saint-Malo area, so with a number of fighter squadrons being diverted to that area, our job is a mixture of air defence and simply going out and causing trouble for Jerry." said Tew; "However, if you haven't been briefed, then there's probably a reason for it."

Several more pilots piled into the back, lighting cigarettes and pipes as the Queen Lizzie pulled away, heading for the airfield itself. A few minutes later, it bounced across the grass to the dispersal where Leathart was waiting.

"Potter, Whitehill, Jakes, over here!" he called as the three, the last to leave the truck, dropped out of the back and walked over towards the aircraft parked up before they changed directions and made for him. "I've just got a load of contradictory orders about you lot from several different commands, but the gist of it from the most senior person is for you three to be dispatched to the base at Tangmere with new aircraft and perform missions which, though not described as such, can be summed up as 'kill anything unfriendly that moves'. Clear?"

"Clear." the three chorused.

"Right, I'll show you over your new aircraft."

* * *

The rapidly changing orders had been strange. It had turned out that, having loaned it to them during the short hours he'd spent there, the RAF Sumburgh administration had copied out the 46 Squadron log and, after returning his own copy, sent it to the Air Ministry, who in turn had analysed the reports, deciding that the three were worth more on the front line than in the position of London air defence.

Harry glanced at the two Supermarine Spitfires spread out slightly behind and with a hundred yards between him and them, on either side. The Hurricane was a superb aircraft, however, it did not have quite the same 'thoroughbred' handling characteristics as they'd found the Spitfire to have.

After just an hour of testing their new aircraft, he, Bill and Jake were rolling out across the English Channel towards France, and towards who-knew-what. They were moving at a fair pace and constantly scanning the sky above and the sea below for anything to have a go at, the loss of Glorious and all on board still weighing on them.

"_French coast, five miles._" reported Bill, who was keeping track of where they were.

They had burned up a small amount of their fuel, travelling at a comfortable cruise of under three-hundred miles an hour so as to conserve the small amount the Spitfire carried, but at full military power, the tanks wouldn't last that long, and it was a hundred mile flight from Le Havre, which they were approaching, and Tangmere.

"_Uh, boss, got five bogeys, flying east-west, two miles probably, 'bout eleven o'clock, low._" radioed Jake.

Harry rolled onto one wing-tip to get a better look. Twin engined, that was all he could see, then twin tailfins.

"Lockheed Hudsons?" he queried; "I'll go down and have a look, circle around at a distance and follow."

Securing his oxygen mask, Harry opened the throttle a touch and pushed the nose down gently, making sure not to cause a negative-G flooding of the engine. He closed to within a mile when the thin shape of the fuselages resolved themselves. Harry quickly flicked off the safety catch for his eight Brownings and opened up to full power.

"Rapier flight, '110s, close and kill." Harry barked.

Bill and Jake closed up behind him as the first Spitfire dived towards the formation. In seconds, the Messerschmitt Bf-110 heavy fighters spotted them and broke to each side. It was too late. Harry had the rearmost in his sights, and for a short moment, the wings of the Spitfire lit up with flashes of fire.

The eight .303 Brownings blazed, spitting bullets into the starboard engine of the aircraft and suddenly, a sheet of flame left the engine nacelle and then the wing folded upwards. The 110 spiralled uncontrollably, one wing missing, and the last thing the gun camera saw was a large white water-spout as the heavy fighter plunged into the English Channel.

Pulling hard back, Harry was astounded once more as the Spitfire launched itself through a two-hundred-and-seventy degree loop that brought him slap-bang right behind another '110. Rolling to starboard to avoid a burst of tracer from the rear gunner, Harry dropped down to below the Messerschmitt and just waited to pounce as it drifted into his gunsight. Once again the staccato flicker of fire on the edge of the wing, and then the tracer of his bullets reached out. Harry eased the Spitfire's nose down for a second before bringing it back up, with a slight right-hand input and let off a second burst of fire.

The first set of bullets ripped into the two port fuel tanks on either side of the central support for the wing – the spar – and then another burst hit the starboard tanks, again on either side of the tanks. The Messerschmitt shuddered as the bullets hit it, then it stalled, rolling over and entering an inverted dive with Harry following it. Then suddenly, it was enveloped in flames, and what emerged was just the tumbling remains of the outer wing panels and the tail.

Harry brought the Spitfire's nose up to see one Messerschmitt trailing smoke and Bill's brand-new Spitfire spitting bullets into it, and Jake diving past the tumbling wreckage of a '110 of his own, trails of tracer leaving his wings and lighting up the side of a second heavy fighter.

Circling to keep an eye out for covering fighters, his eye fell on the petrol gauge.

"Rapier flight, disengage, disengage and return to base." he radioed.

There was no need for the disengage order, the last of the five '110s was on fire and plunging vertically towards the sea. The fight was over, for the next few hours.


	31. Book of what can and has been yet hasn't

_A curse lies upon this book. Not of death, not of pain, but of knowledge. To seek this knowledge will be in itself painful, though it may save your life. The knowledge itself has the capacity to hurt, emotionally and physically. You must weigh the benefits of the unknown against the future you believe approaches. To accept the curse of knowledge, you must spill a drop of your blood on the cover of this tome._

_Unspeakable._

_Nobleman._

_Warlock._

_Soldier._

_Mage._

Harry looked up from what he was reading, carved into the ivory cover of the book he had on his lap. It had been a few days since the night that Sirius escaped from Hogwarts, with his assistance, and in his desperation, had called out, aloud, to the night sky for help. The result had been a flash of light and a book, covered in ivory which was greatly decorated with art, and though he was no art expert, believed to be valuable.

For a few minutes, he balanced what he saw as inevitable. The return to a full body of Voldemort, Sirius continuing to be hunted by the Ministry, and if their attitude to a change in the case was any indication, ignoring the fact that the so-called 'Dark Lord' had returned. Silently, he reached into his pocket, where for the last three years, he had carried a Chatellerault switchblade. With only the slightest wince, Harry cut a thin line in the pad of his thumb and smeared the droplets of blood that gathered in the cut onto the cover of the ivory.

Slowly, he lost hope as nothing happened. Harry slumped at the foot of the normal willow tree he was standing by, tears of frustration beginning to slip down his face. Eventually, he threw the book to one side and allowed his head to fall to his chest, simply sitting there until darkness claimed him.

* * *

"I was surprised you took up our offer." said a mild voice; "I rather expected you to trust more in Dumbledore and the other assorted wizards who say they know what they're doing."

Harry opened his eyes, finding himself stood in a huge vaulted hall, lit by burning torches. Great tapestries hung on the walls depicted stories from mythology and great battles, while at the centre, sat a circular table with ten occupied seats, arranged in pairs, and two unoccupied.

"Where am I?" he demanded, switching his gaze from person to person.

Each of them wore a simple hooded cloak, hiding their features. However the clothing differed. The one who had spoken was puffing contentedly on a straight-stemmed pipe, wearing the sandy-coloured camouflage clothes of the British Army. Next to him was a woman, wearing a leather jacket, a white tank top, jeans and combat boots.

Next to them was a man who was swathed in mottled blue robes and cloak, a short axe thrust through his belt and a rapier in a sheath attached to a belt slung over the back of his chair. Sat in the seat next to him, in identical robes was a female figure, the pale digits of her hand resting on the hilt of a Saxon longsword.

Of the next pair along, the man gave a sharp contrast, wearing a modern blue suit, a white shirt and a red tie, leaning back with his arm wrapped around the shoulders of another female, who was clad in a purple v-necked dress, lined with intricate patterns in gold around her waist and the neck of the dress.

Around the table was a man wearing dark-green leather-like material in the form of armour, a bastard sword on its belt slung over the back of his chair. Resting her head on his shoulder was a woman in a dark-blue robe, laid over chainmail, a Dane Axe leaning against her chair.

The final pair were composed of a stocky male clad in chainmail that glinted dully in the firelight, with a black surcoat over it. On his breast was a coat of arms of a Jerusalem Cross with a Greek Cross between each of the arms of the former. His surcoat however, had at its centre, a naked sword, with a lion's head pommel and a serpent wrapped around it. Then on either side of it was a Maltese Cross of the Knights Hospitaller. Sat next to him was a woman in a simple dark-green dress, lined again with elaborate patterns.

"This is, essentially, in your dreams." replied the same man.

"Then, who are you and how do you control my dreams?" Harry snapped back, earning a rough growl of laughter from the man wearing the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

"Who says we control them?" asked the soldier; "No, it is not a matter of control, it is taking your consciousness into a place of warmth and safety. Inside great stone walls, in the warmth of the fire. The matter of who we are I will leave to the esteemed man behind all of the enchantments that have drawn you here."

Slowly, the man in the mottled blue robe stood up.

"What I created, in conjunction with Unspeakable Fey, is a masterpiece of dimensional magic. Every decision we make, every step we take spawns another dimension, and the bigger decisions, the bigger the changes." he said, his voice no louder than a whisper but carrying just as well; "What I have done is created a piece of magic that reaches out to a bare handful of the more successful versions of myself and create what is essentially a copy of their souls, and their bodies at what magic judges to be their prime, drawing their memories with them. Thus each of the males sat here are essentially, me, though I myself am only a copy image of my own true existence."

Harry stayed silent, having read in the Daily Prophet of rumours about what the Unspeakables got up to, he wasn't going to write off this man as a lunatic quite yet.

"In my fifth year at Hogwarts, I entered the Department of Mysteries, breaking in with a number of friends with the intent to rescue someone close to me. At the moment I strayed into the room where they store the time devices such as Miss Granger got access to, infinite numbers of new and strange alternates opened up." completed the Unspeakable; "I myself had an accident with a Timeturner some years later, which resulted in an interesting jaunt through history and the companionship of Unspeakable Fey, who has stuck with me ever since."

"Unlike the Master Unspeakable, my divergence from the base form came in the British Library during the summer before my third year at Hogwarts when I encountered, in a book written by an Egyptologist, an antiquarian specialising in Ancient Egypt, the incantation for a curse to unite a fractured soul, and then banish it." began the soldier; "I held that curse close to my chest until I was faced with a reborn Voldemort. We duelled and through luck, I gained the upper hand for the moment it took me to utter the curse and destroy him. After that, I vanished from the wizarding world, being recruited aged not-quite fifteen by MI5. I too gained the companionship of a wonderful woman after around two decades of soldiering."

"You're... me?" asked Harry, staggering into a chair.

"Aye." growled the man with the arms of Jerusalem on his breast; "My divergence came in the Department of Mysteries, when I hurled Tom Riddle through the Veil of Death, but as I walked through the building, a stray curse blasted me into a cabinet full of those thrice-damned Timeturners. I landed in Eleven-Seventy with a name worth damn, but fought my way up as Henry the Second's Siege Master in Ireland before sailing for the Holy Land aged nineteen. I married my wife there, and returned to England in Eleven-Ninety-Nine. Not a good time for peace as the country was torn apart by rebellious barons, invading French, but it was fertile grounds for a warrior, and good times for a good fight."

"In my case, my world was rather different to your own. Geographically, it was the same, but while most of Magical Italy was ruled by a somewhat democratic government, the Papal State maintained its own magical rule, who also had a certain amount of power over most other western nations, save Britain. Everything south and east of Croatia to fifteen miles east of Istanbul was still ruled by the Magical Byzantine Empire. Germany, Austria and much of Eastern Europe was under the Holy Roman Empire, while the Ottomans ruled from the borders of the Byzantine Empire to the Middle East." explained the besuited man; "The Mages of St. Peter were tasked with keeping the peace. Britain did not acknowledge the rule of the Court of St. Peter, so I was recruited covertly and extracted from England. After a few years of training, missions and secret rendezvouses with the Byzantine Crown Princess, I married her, led an army on Voldemort, and with the permission of Queen Elizabeth, overthrew the Fudge Administration."

"Finally, I too had a nasty experience with time travel, with a curse corrupted by some magic cast by my own hand. I made my way as a warlock, making war on anyone who did evil, treading the line of darkness very closely until I finally joined the creation of the school you know as Hogwarts. Like all of us, I too am married, it keeps me in the light." chuckled a cynical voice from the last of the men, the one wearing dark-green leather armour; "I called myself Templecombe. The change is that I returned to my own time, with my wife, and tore a bloody swathe through Tom Riddle's army, before ending him myself."

One by one, they threw back the hoods on their cloaks. The soldier had a long scar from the corner of his mouth to his neck, and a second on the other side, from his sideburn down to his jaw. The others were simply more mature versions of himself, except the one who called himself Templecombe, who had a broad white line down one cheek and the noble of Jerusalem, who had a long-healed scar across his throat that could account for his gravelly voice, hair greying, and a second jagged cut barely missing his right eye and carrying on down to where it met a small beard on his chin and lip.

Then the women lowered their hoods. Unspeakable Fey had jet black hair descending in gentle waves down her back, pale green eyes and marble-white skin. And the smirk she wore, seemingly without noticing, was one that inspired fear. The woman next to the soldier was of Mediterranean skin-colouring, a deep olive, and with brown hair so dark it was nearly black, tied back in a ponytail. The Byzantine Princess had lighter, longer hair, and a greyer skin-tone, and observed him with a friendly look, opposed to the smirking Fey, or the blank mask of the woman next to the soldier. The woman sat next to Templecombe also had brown hair, between the two in colour, a rich brown, and dark blue eyes regarded him thoughtfully, though the thoughtful look was offset by the Dane Axe resting against her chair. Finally, the woman next to the noble of Jerusalem lowered her hood to reveal golden blonde hair, a slightly tanned face and grey eyes.

"May I introduce, Unspeakable Fey, Morgana le Fay, not to be mistaken for Morgause, whose reputation has been cast upon the Lady Morgana." growled the noble of Jerusalem; "Next to the Colonel is Miss Ziva David, with Cardinal Mage Potter is Princessa Georgia Constantina, while Templecombe's companion is Lady Rowena Ravenclaw, and of course my own Lady, Countess of La Bana, Maria de Lusignan, and former Princess of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Most of us either go by Harry, or in my case, Hadrian."

"Whoah, so you're saying that all of you are attached to alternate versions of each-other." Harry's brain crawled to a halt, throwing cogs and jets of steam in every direction.

Hadrian of La Bana snorted irritably.

"My dear count, you forget that the Harry before us is still a teenager." Ziva rolled her eyes; "His mind and body are an internal orgy of hormones and unbalanced mental signals, what do you expect?"

"So why have you brought me here?" Harry asked after casting an insulted look at Ziva.

"You brought yourself here." Rowena laughed; "Yet I think this is something you should explain Unspeakable Hunter, as it your magic that created this... place and its capabilities."

"Indeed." huffed the Unspeakable; "The artefact we call the 'Book of Self-Possibilities' has the capability to transfer the consciousness of one pair to the living world and fashion bodies for them, identical to theirs at their peak. It is a choice only you can make. Only I don't recommend Templecombe because he's a psychopath. Or the Cardinal, because he's lived in Italy too long and will just spend his time drinking wine. Or the Count, because he'll try and conquer Israel in the name of the Pope, or Ireland in the name of the Crown. Or the Colonel, because he's a sarcastic git. Or me because I'll get bored and try and re-breed my fifteen-foot wide pet amoeba with stinging tentacles, a gaping maw of jagged teeth and the ability to spit venom. Or try and breed another Megalodon shark."

"You just wrote all of us off..." deadpanned Morgana.

"Something like that." Unspeakable Hunter nodded.


	32. Six Feet Deep

"Problem Chief?" asked the man sat at a desk in the nearly empty office at Thames House. He wasn't working, but rather had his desert multicam clad legs propped up on said desk, his combat boots thrown to one side and a Classic and Sports Car magazine open, hiding his face.

"Damn it to hell!" cursed the tall, somewhat balding man pacing the office. "Potter, you seem to always have the solutions, if you can dig one out of this mess then I might admit that you're worth keeping around!"

"Maybe you could clarify Evans?" asked the first man, lowering his magazine. Around thirty-six years old, though he looked to be in his mid-twenties, but with the air of someone infinitely older. Black hair in a messy mop, green eyes with a steely, hard glint of someone who had seen combat... a lot of it.

Depending on what identity he was using, Hadrian 'Harry' Potter was a Lieutenant Colonel from the Parachute Regiment, on permanent attachment to the Special Air Service, though it wasn't something he ever talked about outside of people with sufficient clearance. Then with a few appearance changes, he was Viscount Harold Arcturus Black, philanthropist, occasional politician and son of the Earl of Blackmore, Lord Sirius Black, who found the whole cloak-and-dagger affair hilarious. On this occasion, the soldier was pretending to finish filing a report from his SAS deployment in Iraq, which would be followed by two weeks leave and then back to the grindstone with whichever squadron had replaced the last one.

"You've heard about these random, public murders in Britain and America?" asked the spymaster, pausing for a nod from the soldier; "Many of them have been motivated by an extremist preacher. We have simply assigned the codename 'Preacher' to him, as we know nothing else. He records his sermons, hides his face, all but his eyes. His voice is distorted, so we can't trace that, and the sermons are broadcast through a myriad of security and outright trickery we can't get through."

"Why didn't you just give me the file, a budget and let me run him into the ground?" Harry queried.

"If it were only that simple. The Americans _and _the Israelis both want a bite at the biscuit." replied Evans; "The Americans aren't cooperating too well with the Israelis since a Kidon operative went rogue with a VEVAK agent and blew up a defected Syrian Colonel in Washington, framing a Mossad liaison officer to one of the local agencies. So to solve their issues and cooperate, they've decided I'm hosting a meeting in about a month to decide what to do about him with a number of senior diplomats and intelligence personnel. I need both the high ground for bargaining, and I need to arrange the entire thing, security, transport, you name it."

"Give me an RAF VC10 flight crew, a Nimrod flight crew, one squadron of Special Forces for security, possibly a Rapier battery and crew if you think air defence is going to be an issue. I've got access to a high-security location with aeronautical facilities which can be made suitable for such a meeting in a short time." Harry rattled off.

"Whoa, wait, explain. Why do you need a VC10 and Nimrod flight crew? You haven't requested the aircraft, and even then using military transports for VIPs is a bad idea. I can understand the security bit, but what's this about a high-security location, I need some more information." Evans demanded.

"Okay, the high-security location is a fortress in the Cambrian Mountains, you probably won't know about it as there are very few people alive who know where it is and the upper parts are camouflaged into the countryside." explained Harry quickly; "It's not exactly the most modern, but between obscurity and the fact it is a medieval castle, it should be hard to get into. Plus there are the extra defences, such as Section M specialise in."

Evans nodded, he knew about Harry's wizarding background, and he'd set up Section M to provide magical protections to UK military installations.

"What you may not know is that my family were, and still are, incredibly rich. When I inherited it, my liquid funds were over a billion, and under the hands of a team of accountants, that has skyrocketed. However, my grandfather and his father had something of a passion for aeroplanes, and I maintain their collection, which includes a de Havilland Comet, which is close enough to the Nimrod, and a Vickers Super VC10. I had engineers check the airframes out, and they're pretty much zero-hour, as new." Harry continued; "I'd send out the VC10 to America, the Comet to Israel, fly the diplomats back to the castle under the protection of my squadron, hold the meeting, get them back out and get on with the hunt. Give me all the information you've got on the Preacher and I'll see what I can do about getting you the best bargaining position."

"You're certain these aircraft are serviceable?" asked Evans.

"Completely." Harry nodded.

The spymaster picked up the phone and dialled a number.

"John, can you come up to the office, I need you to brief an operative on our Number One.", he then paused before turning to Harry; "The bounty on this man is two million US dollars, but if you get him, I'll double that and make sure you're promoted immediately."

"Give the cash to Help for Heroes." Harry waved him off.

* * *

John Robertson was a completely normal man. Middle aged, with slightly thinning, greying hair, a slight shadow on his cheeks, he wore a slightly faded suit, swore at the London traffic when it slowed him down, had very few real patterns. He visited a local coffee shop randomly, sometimes in the morning, at lunch or in the evening. Everything in his life was normal, not clinical, but normal.

He'd been an operative in Northern Ireland, one of those who could be tarred with an ill brush, yet had served Queen and Country loyally. He walked alongside the tall, lithely built soldier as they moved through the corridors of Thames House, quietly discussing the target.

"Preacher. He's a cunning little shit." growled the retired field agent turned office operative to the soldier; "Ever heard of something called 'Hejira'?"

"Anglicised corruption of the Arabic 'Hijra', the migration of Muhammed and his companions from Mecca to Medina if I recall my Islamic studies correctly." replied Harry.

"Hmmph. Also the name of his website. He records them and transfers it to the website server. Which is housed inside a vehicle he bought in Delhi years ago. The company's gone, so are the people, that's a dead end." explained Robertson as the soldier flashed his ID card across a scanner.

"Clever, it's mobile, so we don't know how far it is from where he is, and it can follow him around as he moves. Rather Darwinian, the stupid end up dead quickly, if he's survived this long, he's an enemy not to be underestimated." Harry commented to his companion.

"Quite. Now, we have tried tracking the server's geographical location, but he uses malware placed on other people's computers, unknowingly, to broadcast the server. Those are all then covered with proxies to make it even more difficult to track the genuine one, or more like impossible." said Robertson.

"Since he's still alive and unidentified, I assume GCHQ have tried, and given that the Americans want some level of cooperation, they're probably having little to no luck." mused Harry; "I believe I'm going to try something slightly unusual. Inform the quartermaster to expect an order for some fairly sophisticated, but not above commercial level cyber equipment."

He already had a plan racing through his mind, it would take a bit of doing, but he felt it was possible. Improvisation and outside-the-box thinking was what kept him alive.

"If you put this bastard in the ground, I don't care if you ask me to have you supplied with London's finest escort girls." growled Robertson; "MI5 has rotated about a dozen operatives through this tasking and between them, they've produced jack shit."

* * *

_Author's Note: I am contemplating putting together some of my 'Pilot's Tales' one-shots into a proper story, or at least giving them some continuity, thoughts?_

_ElMarquis_


	33. In Darkness is Light - LOTR-HP

_The land of Middle Earth is an ancient place, we those who remember the creation. Unlike Earth, the sun and moon appear to indeed revolve around it, the mystic energies are strong but indeed, stifling. Only the most powerful can cast even the most simple of spells, however, some know how to bend these energies into non-physical illusions and indeed, wield the energies as weapons, taming them to their will._

_Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore and Ceridwin Potter_

* * *

A dark shadow cast darkness upon a corner of a courtyard in the fortress of Helm's Deep. For an unknown reason, nobody went near the shadow, which it was fine with, a black robe wafting between the physical and just a phantom in the darkness. For days upon days, Theoden, King of Rohan, had his men furiously reinforcing the defences of Helm's Deep. Appearing where shadows were cast by the walls and the sun, The Black Mage, a tall, hooded figure swathed in a robe of a dark silky material which blended with the shadows, had brought his own mystical powers to bear upon the ancient stones of Helm's Deep.

A black staff had rung out like a dull drum, slamming against the earth. With rock torn from the earth depths of the land, moulded into boulders of the right size and weight for the catapults maintained by the fortress. Another dull drum-beat as the staff slammed into the ground and clay-mud mixed with earth and rock had risen and collapsed inwards over the Deeping Stream, forming a tunnel below the earth, rendering an entrance into the fortress gone.

Then the workers in the fortress brought bundles of thousands of arrows to him, enchanted so that the shafts wouldn't break and the heads were hard enough to puncture armour. The forge masters worked on hundreds of blades, reforging them in fire which burned blue, supplied by the mage again, refining them or even simply sharpening them. Cheap axes were made given the need to keep back as much metal as possible, while wood was easily worked and near-unlimited.

With the sorcerer's assistance and direction, carpenters reinforced the gates of the great fortress. Dozens of men, women and children were drilled through the use of swords, axes and spears to defend the last fortress to the last. Women would be held in reserve, but they too were willing to give their lives so others could escape deep into the mountains, as willing as every man who had sworn to lay down his life so as to stall Sauron's thrall Saruman.

Every hour, on the hour, the throb of a true drum made from the skin of a shark and the wood of a most ancient tree echoed across Helm's Deep, the defenders looking up to the sun to see the time, wondering if their last hours approached. Would they live? If they did, how many of their fellows would be dead?

And then, the horn blew.

* * *

"What do you mean Albus!" screeched a Scottish voice; "That he's been missing for more years than anyone has known, but you've known about it for four, and nobody has been told!"

"Minerva, imagine the chaos when they realise the boy-who-lived vanished." explained a grandfatherly voice; "But I've been searching for him since he failed to appear for his first year-"

A green fire burst into life in the fireplace of the circular office.

"Dumbledore." stated a hooded man in the flames; "We've found a trace of inter-dimensional magic about a mile from the Dursley residence."

"Can you track it?" asked the eldest man.

"Not exactly... But imagine a length of string, we don't know where it goes. But we can attach a ring to it and slide the ring down the string... and send someone with that ring..." stated the hooded man.

"You mean we could go after him?" stated the broad Scottish-accented woman.

"Exactly." the man in the fire agreed.

"What are you waiting for Albus?" she barked.

"Wait Madam McGonagall, such a trip requires preparation. This dimension is theorised to be one of many where any possibility is real, thus creating an infinity of them. Thus we cannot say what the alternate will be like, for instance, it could be a near replica of this world where somebody in 1490 failed to go to the loo. Or it could be utterly different, no magic, different language, no currency, different currency..." warned the hooded man.

"No matter, translation spells, a bit of bullion, shouldn't be too much of a problem." said the eldest man dismissively; "How long until you can put your... trace... on the travel?"

"A day Dumbledore, a day." said the man in the fire; "But remember, time may not follow the same speed as it does here... so between when Scion Potter left and now may have been a hundred years... or more. For all we know, the world might be a far different place to one he saw, or completely gone. This could be a one-way trip for you into a total vacuum."

* * *

Sat under the shadows of a tree, the faint rasp of a whetting stone halted as the eerie tones of an elven horn rang out, followed by several more in succession. Standing up, the figure swiftly moved through the shadows, often completely vanishing into them before re-emerging.

The gates were flung open as a woman, mounted on a coal-black charger led a host of elven archers, six wide and hundreds deep across the chasm below the fortress. The horsewoman was the epitome of deadly beauty. Midnight black hair tied back in a ponytail descending into the long midnight black fur-lined cloak flung over her shoulders, eyes which glowed a fiery gold in sharp, pale features. A mixture of chainmail and the hide of a great serpentine creature making up her armour and the elegant filigree of the scabbards in which sheathed blades rested, slung at her side.

Dismounting with a light _clink_ as her chainmail shook, she moved with a grace reserved for only the greatest fencers and most elegant dancers, alongside a silver-haired male elf.

A tired, haggard looking Aragorn burst out with two others behind Theoden.

"I bring word from Elrond of Rivendell;" the elf stated; "Long ago, an alliance existed between men and elves. We fought and died together on the fields of Mordor. We have come to honour that allegiance."

Aragorn bowed momentarily with a fist clasped over his heart before clasping the elf in a hug.

Seeing the mage lounging in the shadows, the woman strode over and pulled him out, sliding back the hood to show an ageless face, twinkling green eyes and untameable black hair. She immediately wrenched him into a heated kiss.

"You came." he whispered into her hair as he clasped the woman to his chest.

"I always will Harry." she replied; "Haldir was bringing his host of five-hundred, I rode everywhere I could, I've roused six-hundred elfin archers with an allegiance to us, mostly Silvan elves who roam the lands, and four hundred elfin swordsmen also of the Silvan clan, eight-hundred man-warriors, one-hundred shield-maidens, fifty of the best dwarven engineers of any peoples, and they fight with us."

"And my own host, three-hundred light infantry." the mage smirked; "Well done Ceredwin, Saruman and his accursed master shall never force free people kneel to them!"

"Free people need never kneel unless they decide of their own free will to." Ceridwin nodded; "Come, let us find if within these walls a good meal can be had."

In a short time they found themselves seated with the remainder of the so-called 'Fellowship' at a long table in the great hall of the castle, one hewn into the very rock of the White Mountains. With them were Theoden of Rohan and his daughter, as well as the Rohirric general Gamling.

"You were lucky that we were cutting across the northern territories when we came across the Warg Pack or far more would have reached your column." commented Ceridwin between bites of a chicken leg.

With those who could not fight being evacuated to Helm's Deep earlier that day, they were beset by a mere dozen Wargs and the orcish riders. Harry could only imagine the bloodshed if the fierce monsters and their riders had come in sufficient force, and at the time had wondered why they had not. Now he knew.

"Indeed. Though I still worry. We are inside this fortress, yet we are also backed into a corner with little or no escape." Aragorn sighed; "People look to me to lead, yet what can I give them? Empty promises of life in the future when I do not know if they will survive the coming conflict."

"Hope?" asked Legolas; "We are not armies in ourselves, however skilled with arms we are. However, the people of Rohan have suffered under the constant abuse of Sauron, now they have a king who is renewed from his fever, and the heir to Gondor is amongst them. They draw hope from that, they draw hope from those of us who are willing to live and die in the cause of freedom."

"Laddie, ever heard the term 'cornered animal'. The accursed wretches of Mordor and Isengard have driven us into a corner. Now let them reap the whirlwind of their hubris." growled Gimli, bashing a hand on the table causing the platters of food to jump inches off the wood; "Now where's the beer, there's a good fight coming and I feel that's a good reason to celebrate!"

"I would advise against that, Master Dwarf, you have proven incapable of holding your drink." Legolas taunted as all about roared with laughter; "But we'll celebrate the victory with a cask of beer."

"Yet still, I will question myself. I am told I am king, yet can I _be_ the ruler and leader?" Aragorn commented quietly.

"It is the moment that you stop questioning yourself that you ought to become worried." Eowyn, Theoden's niece immediately countered.

"That is true. To rule you must question your actions for they ultimately can have a far larger impact than a simple man's actions." Theoden nodded.

"A king is not born." Harry said, his voice ringing off the stones; "Someone with the potential to rule is born, and I would say that all around this table have that potential. It is what we do with that potential. Forged in the fires of combat, melded in the depths of scholarship, that is what makes a ruler. Our wisdom, our cunning, our fierceness in the face of adversity."

"Indeed, then I shall do all in my power to work towards being the ruler that I am proclaimed to be." Aragorn nodded, standing up from the bench; "Sorcerer, I would beg you assistance, the caves. They are many and winding, I believe that with what we have here we can paint false entrances and cover the tunnels where the womenfolk and the children hide."

"Lead on, I will see what we can do." Harry grinned.

"Eowyn, go with them." ordered Theoden.

"And am I too doomed to cower in those caves, not allowed to defend my homeland and people with a sword in my hand?" she demanded, standing up sharply; "That I alone of the women who bear blades am forced away from the wall?"

There were only two women who bore swords. Herself and Ceridwin.

"There is no glory in war. There is pain, loss, suffering and bloodshed." said Ceridwin with a flat, emotionless gaze; "Would I be able to, I would stand aside and live in the bliss of ignorance. Were I not what I am. Cherish what peace you can. While your liege lord defends the wall, you are the leader of those who are to remain in the caves. If it comes to it, you may have your chance to use your sword in anger. And I know that you have suffered under the curse of Saruman and want vengeance, but hold it in until we find the accursed wizard."

Eowyn's mind was awash with battling thoughts. Loyalty to king and kin begged her both to stand her ground to defend them, and to give in and allow them to hustle her off to the Glittering Caves. Then there was the advice of the woman who sat next to the Black Sorcerer, and given the layers of armour she wore along with an elvish scimitar, was undoubtedly a warrior.

"Truly, take what arms can be spared, and should Saruman be able to breach this fortress with his sorcery, be prepared to defend your people. Do not do this grudgingly, for the dark forces seek to split all from ancient alliances to familial love. To divide us and destroy us." Ceridwin continued; "Protect your people with your life."

* * *

**The fourth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age**

A day passed as labourers continued to slave over the defences of the ancient fortress, doing all they could to make victory a certainty, but only so much was complete as night fell. Harry, stood on the ramparts, finishing assembling a ballista, looked up as the ground shook, the thundering roar of the charging horde of Saruman came down the valley, torches spotted amongst a huge force of abominations, monsters created by a fallen wizard.

"TO ARMS ROHAN, TO ARMS ELVES. GIVE THEM ALL THE MERCY THEY WOULD GIVE YOU! THIS IS WHERE THEY DIE!" Harry thundered from his perch on the Deeping Wall; "NEAR A HUNDRED YEARS HAD SAURON HELD THIS LAND IN HIS CLUTCHES. A HUNDRED YEARS HIS MANIPULATIONS AND FOUL MINIONS HAD US LIVING IN FEAR! NO MORE! HERE, THEY FALL LIKE WATER UPON A ROCK!"

Aragorn nodded gratefully at the hooded mage as every man stood up straighter, every shield feeling lighter. Battle was upon them.

Holding up his fist, Harry slowly drew it downward. He called on the mystic energy of Arda, shaping it into a coiling, writhing storm, and then loosed his fist. The magic in the air burst, violently, sending down a tide of water and dozens of bolts of lightning which fell from the storm-ripped sky into the horde. Beside him, Ceridwin drew up her staff, a piece of art made from the gleaming gold of Laurelin, one of two trees of Valinor, bound in blood to her.

She slammed it down on the rampart, channelling magic into the earth itself. Viciously sharp rocks burst from the ground in a low wall pointed into the charging Uruk-hai.

"WE HOLD TO DAWN!" she yelled into the wind; "AT DAWN, ROHAN RETURNS AND WITH IT, THE ROHIRRIM! LET NO ORC OR URUK-HAI FEEL MERCY!"

A jet black staff materialised in Harry's hand, a fire of eerie green flames trailing behind the top as he lifted it in the air. Dozens of catapults, ballistae and other siege weaponry came into action, their crews responding to the signal. Powerful plated hands glinted, clasped around the jet black wood as huge quarrels, rocks and ceramic pots of boiling oil were launched across the wall and onward, into the valley, the pots of oil set fire to before launching.

The charging Uruks had piled up against the jagged rocks, impaling and crushing those in front, and then the missiles hurtled into the back of the force, setting blazing fires, crushing Uruk-hai with rocks and impaling them with quarrels. They clustered forwards, killing more of their number with the force of their pushing, crushing other Uruks indiscriminately in their bid to escape the oily flames, only exacerbated by the rain.

Placing his staff against the wall, he pulled apart his black robe and clipped it behind his back as a cloak, revealing a powerful frame clad in a layer of leather armour, itself covered by chainmail with a plate cuirass, vambraces, rerebraces, boots of the serpentine hide covered by plated greaves.

The armour continued to glint in the light of hundreds of projectiles, some burning fiercely as they shot through the sky. He didn't really need the armour, but seeing a leader to believe in, clad in fearsome armour was one of the greatest things an army could have.

Chuckling lightly at the camaraderie between Legolas and Gimli as the latter struggled to see the massacre below, Harry surveyed the run up to the wall as the horde approached a brightly painted pole stuck into the earth. Raising his staff into the air again, he yelled;

"Three hundred paces, half-draw!"

Five seconds later;

"Full draw!"

Grinning in a shark-like fashion, he awaited them to approach the marker.

"RELEASE!"

Hundreds upon hundreds of arrows rained down into the horde as they continued to advance, still hampered by a continuous bombardment by various siege engines behind the walls. Every man, woman and child who could draw a bow had come out to volley arrows on the attackers.

"And yet they fall like water upon the rocks!" Aragorn yelled triumphantly, seeing as Ceridwin raised a great magical shield with her gauntleted hands facing, palms out toward the oncoming force. Rain washed off it, falling to below the wall where the earth was churned and soaked, making it difficult for the Uruk-hai to advance.

Harry was using his staff to propel the water toward the horde, blasting them with it and churning up the mud. More than once, braces of lightning bolts fell into the water-logged soil and fried anything touching it.

"Draw... RELEASE!" he yelled once more.

"Do you want to delay them a bit more?" called Ceridwin.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" asked Harry.

"Big angry and smoky?" she replied.

"To hell with it! This land will be hell if we do not go with it." Harry grunted.

The two flipped up their hoods and drifted, wraith-like, into the shadows, emerging below the wall, staffs and armour being the only parts visible of them in the dark, dull night.

Ceridwin's visage, beneath the hood of her cloak, became a terrible sight, features sharpening more, her hair slipping down her back, eyes flashing an even darker orange and red, flames licking around her irises and power radiating around her like a blanket of darkness. Below her normal image were several visages, all terrible to behold. She fell on the enemy, enraged at such abominations being allowed to so much as exist.

Thrusting the staff forward like a spear, it stopped short of a group of five Uruks, but then she drew it back sharply, reeling them in as if lassoed, but ducking out of the way so that they were propelled at high speed into the rocks. One staggered up, just in time for Harry to swing around, a vicious morningstar flail gripped in his right hand while he gestured with the staff in his left. The two-hundred kilo Uruk was dragged off its clawed feet and drawn forward, furiously clawing at its throat, choking as Harry melded the magic around that bit of air and constricted it. He then swung the flail around from the right into the head of the monster, dispatching it with a single blow.

Then another group of Uruks chanced their luck and charged. One was foolish enough to be caught in a shadow cast by the moon behind the Horn of Helm Hammerhand. The shadows leapt forward and dragged the beast in, vanishing for a few moments before the dismembered corpse was thrown back out. Ceridwin grinned savagely. For a being of _true_ light to have such control over darkness was... strange and exhilarating.

Harry's staff had vanished from his left hand as a group rushed him, and the chain of the flail was wound through his belt. He grabbed an Uruk by the throat, the sharpened edges of his plate gauntlet's plates cutting into the foul flesh. Reinforcing his arm by pushing magic into it, he shook the Uruk-hai like a rag-doll, and it suddenly went limp in his grip, its neck broken. He pitched the corpse at the group of them which were growling uselessly.

With them bowled over he rushed forward, his cloak billowing like some dark phantom. A flash of silver steel and a bastard sword was in one hand. The long elven blade was strange in that there was no curve, the steel did not shine with the usual lustre, it had experienced evil, fought it so many times, had a master die with the blade in his hand. Harry liked to believe that Fingolfin would be glad to see Ringil still being borne against the darkness.

Testing the familiar weight of the sword, Harry spun it around and drove it deep into the chest of one of the four living Uruk-hai. One of them was struggling to its feet as he gripped the hilt in two hands and swung it around. Elven steel flashed and black blood spurted as the head of the Uruk thumped to the ground.

Harry was just about to finish off the other two when Ceridwin advanced forward, a one-handed bearded axe clutched in one clawed gauntlet and a heater shield on her other arm. The first remaining Uruk raised its cleaver-like sword and brought it down in a blow meant to cut her in half. A bell-like nose rang out as she raised the shield to take the blow, falling to her right knee as her right boot slid in the mud under the force of the blow.

That didn't stop her tensing her right leg and using it to launch herself forward, bulling over the monstrous Uruk with her rather insignificant body-weight and following it with a skull-splitting axe-blow. The second was already racing at her, swinging downwards with its cleaver. She simply slid to the left to avoid the chop and belted the animal over its head with her shield, momentarily stunning it long enough to embed the axe in its spine with a sickening crash and_ thunk _as the axe first crashed through its crude armour and then sank into the flesh of the Uruk..

With a fifty-foot circle around them cleared by the herself and leaving torn bodies in the sodden earth, they prepared for the ritual. First, their axes, swords, shields and other weapons vanished in smoke and then, the rods of their staffs grew out of their gauntlets until they were both clutching them.

Stood opposite her, Harry began to chant in a dirge-like tone, the two circling the same spot some twenty feet apart as they drew a circle in the mud with the butts of their staffs.

"Release and bind to me!" they thundered in the Olde Tongue, Valarin, as flames burst around the circle.

A demon, smaller yet far more physically powerful than a Balrog burst from the earth, compact, fierce and truly angered as it was immediately caught by a cone of concentric spheres of near-invisible magic emanating from the two staffs and their wielders. It was leaner, smaller and more terrible than a Balrog, a huge flanged mace clutched in one clawed hand as it snorted smoke from its bull-like nostrils.

Much like a Minotaur, yet a far fiercer creature.

On the wall, Legolas's eyes widened as he took in events below, elven eyes scanning the battlefield.

"Aragorn!" he called to the man who was racing over from one of the captains.

"By the Valar." gasped the man as he watched the sorcerer and the sorceress calmly walk the demon into the ranks of Saruman's army.

"We ought to give them some protection, aim beyond the demon." stated the elf.

"Two-fifty paces; DRAW!" called Aragorn; "RELEASE!"

Several more volleys followed, ripping holes in the horde's ranks as they saw with satisfaction, that before numbers overwhelmed and destroyed it, the demon ripped apart the commander, a gigantic Uruk-hai who had tried to use brute strength to dispatch the demon, to find itself torn limb from limb by the claws of a far more dangerous kind of monster.

Below, Harry glanced at Ceridwin;

"Get the elfin archers to behind the wall, let infantry take their place!" he ordered; "Go!"

She nodded and vanished silently. Harry turned to face the horde, a mail coif and a great helmet materialising under his hood. He was the only one of his dimension to have visited Middle Earth... but he'd arrived around seven thousand years before the Battle of the Hornburg, at The Beginning. Seven thousand years to shape his magic, no, no petty fallen deity and a lesser deity, also fallen, even with his own monstrous army was getting to take over Middle Earth.

Stepping forward, Harry's eyes glowed an unnatural green as he strode forward, staff in his right hand, point down as it began to shimmer with power, an eerie green building at the end. Crossing the devastation wrought by arrows, magic and a demon, the first Uruk-hai to approach him fell as the staff touched it.

The first dead by his hand, lying by his feet, the sorcerer stood completely still as the Uruk-hai roared, beat their chests and tried to intimidate him. A heater shield materialised on his left arm as the staff elongated into a leaf-bladed spear. It still glowed an eerie green.

The first blade to descend upon him met thin air as he slipped behind the abomination and struck it dead with a blow into the neck with the leaf-bladed spear. Turning through a hundred-and-eighty degrees, he bashed aside a sword with his shield and riposted with a fatal lunge. The curved edge of the shield momentarily sharpened before he slashed it across the neck of another Uruk-hai, being brutally ripped out and embedded in the arm of another attacking monster.

Tearing the shield out, he kicked the creature's legs out from under it and stabbed the spear through its back. He may have long left Earth, but there were many things he remembered. History had taught him of some of the great warrior peoples. The Spartans he respected in particular, a long-gone nation of fierce warriors. Fighting with a spear, shield and a sword, emphasising strength and manoeuvrability in battle

The spear momentarily returned to staff form in Harry's hand, and he thrust it in the direction of a charging Uruk-hai while it was still many feet away. A blast of pure magic ripped it limb from limb moments before the sorcerer spun around, a sickly yellow scythe of magic leaving the end. It lashed deep into half-a-dozen Uruk-hai and sent them to the earth, a deep furrow carved into their torsos.

Such was the curse that he formed on the tip spear that a single graze left three Uruk-hai shuddering on the ground, frothing at the mouth before thrashing into death's embrace. Smirking, Harry twisted and lowered his body so an attacker made contact with the shield, and carried by its momentum and the shield, was simply flung over his shoulder, receiving a thrust into the left-hand side of its torso from Harry's spear.

Returning the spear to the form of a jet-black staff Harry vanished it along with the shield. Harry whipped the bastard sword, Ringil, from its sheath on his left hip, immediately biting deeply into the stomach of an attacker. Pulling it loose, he callously kicked the beast aside and continued walking forward.

The neatly arrayed cohort of Uruk-hai was beginning to splinter. While it wouldn't slow the other cohorts, it would slow this one down, and in the long-run, help significantly. Blade resting on his left shoulder, Harry's paces sped up slightly as he met the next monster.

The blade of Ringil glinted in the moonlight as it came up and descended in a two-handed grip to hack deep into the creature's contaminated flesh, cutting diagonally down from its left shoulder, deep into its chest. The animal roared in agony as both the ice-cold Elvish steel and the torn shards of its own armour were driven into the cut before collapsing as Ringil was ripped back out of, drawing back so as to further open the wound.

Five Uruk-hai attacked him, simply rushing towards him, no attempt at any tactics. The first two he simply stepped aside and let them run into each-other with a resounding _clang!_ before hacking their heads from their shoulders with a brutal swing before they could fall apart. He rammed the Elvish battle blade straight through the ineffective Uruk armour, into the stomach of the third, using a two-handed lunge at waist-level which pushed his body-weight behind the sword. Harry swiftly withdrew the sword and, bringing his back leg up, twirled it in a circular slash which sent yet another monster screaming to the churned-up mud and to death. The fifth ran past him as he dodged, collapsing as the blade bit into the back of its knees.

Harry had barely dropped that one when nearly a dozen more ran at him. Blocking a sword with Ringil for the first time, the ring of steel against steel heralding death like a funeral bell, he whipped a dagger out of his belt and thrust it deeply into the stomach of the closest one before embedding it in the forehead of a second with a powerful throw. Tripping the third over with an outstretched leg, he impaled it through the back into the mud with the sword.

"Something high – zero to me. Nice score." he muttered with a smirk as he summoned the dagger into his hand, wiped it clean and sheathed it.

With them running at him from every angle, he teleported behind the largest group attacking him and, clasping a gauntleted hand around the mouth of the rearmost right marker of the group and drove a dagger into its neck, twisting the blade around several times, opening the wound further for good measure.

Very effectively blending into the darkness, Harry slunk back, reaching into his belt for the handle of the morningstar. Having freed it from his belt, he swung it a couple of times before delivering a crushing blow to the head of one of the Uruk-hai. With a momentary thought, his staff appeared in his left hand and immediately turned into the leaf-bladed spear. He hacked into them from behind, cutting down thirty before they reacted and turned toward him.

Twirling it elegantly, he bludgeoned two Uruk-hai with the viciously-spiked ball on the end of the flail before piercing a third with the spear form of the staff. His eyes flashed with fire for a moment, then the air around the heads of a group of Uruk-hair suddenly stilled. They looked around confusedly before beginning to howl as Harry, grinning savagely, slowly compressed the air until the skulls of the five monsters suddenly burst like overripe fruit. An Uruk rushed him just in time for an underhand swing of the flail, which crushed the armour and embedded itself in the animal's crotch. He booted over the Uruk and delivered a thrust of the spear through the nape of its neck.

He was a sorcerer, a warlock – a warrior of magic. Spotting Ceridwin appear for a moment in a patch of moonlight, crossbow levelled at the head of an Uruk, he flexed his magic, preparing to wield it as a weapon of war.

As he concentrated on maintaining a magical awareness of the area around him, he felt a further group trying to sneak up on him. Lightning burst from his hands and left the six shuddering, smoking and dead on the earth. Within a minute, the entire cohort of a hundred monsters lay dead, crushed, slashed, stabbed, poisoned or fried on the ground which ran black with Uruk-hai blood, just one dark figure stood like a devil, swathed in black.

Turning to look at the fortress, he saw the horde beginning to put up ladders. Harry closed his eyes and raised his hands, suddenly empty of weapons. His lips moved soundlessly under his hood, his green eyes suddenly turning the same burning, fiery gold as Ceridwin's. He had summoned cursed fire, made from the spirits of hell-beasts, provoked to destroy all they could. Once upon a time he had had difficulty controlling this.

Now, he was a fearsome sight, rampaging creatures of fire lashing out, consuming anything they could. He strode forward, toward the fortress, leaning on the spear with which he'd impale any unfortunate stragglers of the horde. Soon, his flames began consuming the attacking force who turned to face him. Moments later a hail of arrows, which could have blotted out the sky with their volume had there been a sun, lifted from behind the wall and fell on the attackers, leaving them writhing in the dirt, steel and ash wood embedded in their doomed bodies.

He was gathering pace, towards the ladders. A thought turned the spear back into the staff, and then into a vicious halberd. He swung it in both hands, beheading an Uruk who had the bad judgement to come within ten feet of him. A second howled and rushed him. With a mighty push, he drove the spearhead of the halberd as deep as it would go into the Uruk's chest, and hoisted it up on the halberd, still writhing. A jab of the weapon into the air hurled the beast towards its fellows.

That was when he saw a group of Uruk-hai dragging barrels of gunpowder toward the recently-filled gap where the Deeping Stream had run. The magic in the air condensed into the form of another spear, as he had no wish to lose his staff, which regained its form from the halberd and vanished.

Harry continued striding forward, gathering pace until he broke into a run. Drawing a small axe in his left hand as an Uruk left the group to confront him, Harry continued running forwards. The Uruk-hai was dealt with as he belted it in the jaw with the axe, severing the jaw save for the flesh of its cheeks and driving the bone into its brain. He didn't halt, the axe dissolving in black smoke. Then, within a short distance of the gunpowder-carrying Uruks, Harry hurled the spear overhand. It hurtled through the air and sank between the shoulders of a torch-bearing Uruk, who stared disbelievingly at the projectile sticking through its torso before slowly toppling forward. The blazing torch landed in a pot of gunpowder and set the entire lot off over fifty feet from the wall where it consumed the carriers in a huge fireball.

Sinking into the shadows, Harry emerged up on the wall, appearing between Aragorn and Ceridwin, ahead of the host of archers who were tightly packed, volleying arrows, dropping to their knees and allowing the next rank to fire a volley. Constant sustained fire coming from the fortress of four or five arrows a minute per archer were massacring the Uruk-hai. Ceridwin caught sight of a figure appearing and swung around, about to deal a vicious blow with a curved scimitar. Harry's quick drawing of Ringil just managed to block the slice, while his left went around her shoulders and dragged her in, against his chest. Their lips met in what was at first a fierce, one-sided kiss, before she realised who it was and pulled him in with her free hand, kissing back for a moment before pushing him away.

"We're a bit busy Harry, I sent the infantry back, there was only a brief incursion onto the wall." Ceridwin reported with a slight blush on her face as she tried to ignore how he'd stopped her attack which was intended to be swift and fatal; "They're down probably two-fifths of their force... and counting."

"Still a good few hours to go." Harry grinned, lowering his sword before ducking as she seemed to take another swing at him, only to hear the sound of steel cutting flesh and after turning around, seeing a beheaded Uruk slowly sinking to the rough stone of the rampart, the rain washing away the blood. "Love you."

"Love you too." Ceridwin smiled for a moment before turning serious, looking over the battlefield.

Harry sheathed the sword and picked up a longbow and a bundle of arrows that lay on the wall. Ceridwin dashed off to attack a group of Uruk-hai pouring over the wall from their ladder. He silently drew the string back and let it loose with a satisfying _twang _as a long barbed arrow pinned an Uruk through the nape of its neck.

For hours, the siege continued with the elfin archers and human bowmen continually picking off the Uruk-hai and dodging crossbow bolts from below. Several attempts to breach the wall with explosives were foiled- often with great casualties for the bearers of the volatile materials. Ceridwin and Harry held back the ladder assaults on the wall, along with Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn, cutting down the Uruks and hurling them back into their compatriots.

The trebuchets and mangonels were continuously hurling pots of oil over the wall, like fiery comets. They landed amongst the monsters with devastating results, coating the creatures in burning liquid which no amount of water would put out, but instead caused it to burn even more fiercely.

For hours, they repulsed attack after attack, repulsed by arrows, by sorcery and occasionally, good steel. Finally at dawn's first light, the host of Rohirrim arrived.

Cheers rang out, shields were clattered against with swords as the field was swept of the remainder of Saruman's ill-bred monstrosities.

"We did it." Ceridwin whispered into Harry's shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her.

"This battle." he warned quietly, not wanting to upset any of the cheering defenders.

Releasing her, he thumped Aragorn on the shoulder.

"We've won the battle - a counter attack is necessary. Sauron and Saruman won't take this well." Harry commented.

"He is right." stated Haldir, the elfin commander; "We crushed the invasion force with minimal combat, mainly siege weaponry, bows and magic. However, we now have cavalry, and enough horses in the fortress to equip a few more. Ten-thousand fall at the feet of a couple of thousand fighters."

A raven swooped out of the air, carrying a blood-splattered parchment scroll.

Harry read it briefly, handed it to Ceridwin and swept down the stairs to the courtyard behind the Deeping Wall. His staff materialising in his hand, a dull, drumbeat-like sound reverberated as he slammed it into the ground. In a matter of minutes, three-hundred tired-looking bowmen assembled before him.

For some reason that he wasn't quite sure of, Harry was immortal, he hadn't aged in many, many long years. In the last age, he had raised a personal army. Now they were assembled before him. Comfortable, light leather armour, metal cuirasses, greaves, Corinthian helmets, circular shields, spears, short swords and powerful shortbows. These men had willingly been trained to the point of destruction. They were hardened warriors, based on the Spartan warriors of his old lands.

"I once knew of a time and a place where three-hundred men stood up against hundreds of thousands, backed by a self-proclaimed god and slew tens of thousands before they were killed by arrows. Osgiliath is on the point of falling, they fight in the streets to hold back Sauron's army. You have eight hours to clean your arms and then we ride for Gondor to hold them off, they do not number hundreds of thousands, yet we will still slaughter them!" he declared.

They roared their approval. The Titans were tired, but eager to eke some little, or not so little, revenge on the dark forces which had terrorised the West for so long.

"And we will with you." stated an elegant voice from behind him.

Harry swivelled around to see Haldir, backed by several hundred of his archers, and Ceridwin.

"Very well, clean your arms, ask Theoden for horses, we must not stay here long." he ordered.

"Good. Gimli, Legolas, we have our own cause to pursue in the next few days." Aragorn said with a grim smile; "I do not know if you stout enough of heart to go where I wish to tread. It will not be easy, and may yet cost us our lives."

"Not even a chance for a mug of beer and a good venison roast?" Gimli grumbled irritably; "And don't ask me about that bread of yourn elf."

Legolas shut his mouth quickly as the three quickly made towards the stables and their horses, to ride ahead to Dunharrow and the mouth to the Paths of the Dead.

* * *

Yawning slightly, Ceridwin slipped out from under Harry's arm and stood up in the courtyard where they'd crashed out. She stretched, slightly cat-like in manner and quickly began to grab her bits of armour. An innate affinity with the sun and the stars meant she knew how long had passed since they had fallen asleep.

Over her padded leather jerkin and trousers, she pulled on a vest of dragon's hide bound together with rings of mithril chain, and boots of the same monster's hide. A knee-length hauberk followed that, and finally the bracers, rerebraces, cuirass and greaves. As she was just looping her swordbelt around her waist prior to pulling on her cloak, Ceridwin spotted the Rohirric King's niece, Eowyn daughter of Eomund watching her.

"Do not be afraid if you wish to speak." Ceridwin said mildly, pulling the clasp of her cloak across her shoulders.

Sitting down on an upturned barrel, she waited for the Rohirric maiden to gather her courage for a moment before speaking.

"Am I doomed to sit within the cold comforts of the fortresses of my people, never to participate in the struggle for our freedom from the oppression that comes from Saruman in the west and Sauron in the east?" asked Eowyn; "To live, caged to the whims of the menfolk of Rohan, to grow old unknowing of the battles our people give their lives in?"

"No. I do not think it is your fate. Your loneliness and despondency comes of what, to one of your age, was an age of serving under a loved one who did not so much as know your face. Yet through trials that would break a normal person, you perpetuated Rohan, your people against all the odds have lived to face Saruman and won." Ceridwin commented with a shake of her head; "I truly meant what I said about there being no glory in battle. It may seem glorious when recited to music in the years after, but oft, even time does not heal the emptiness of the heart when love is lost."

"It does not seem to be something you lack though..." Eowyn shrugged, glancing at the still-sleeping Harry.

"It was not always thus. Once we were bitter enemies." replied Ceridwin; "He loved an elvish woman, one of exceptional beauty, wisdom and valour. Then Morgoth, a fallen Maia called Melkor, fell upon her people and she was destroyed. To this day I do not know how much they knew one-another, but when she died, for a while so did his soul. For hundreds of years, he rampaged across Arda, seeking to destroy Melkor so utterly that nought would remain of him except his consciousness, which he wished to torture with an eternity of nothingness."

"And you?" asked Eowyn, struck with horror.

"I... I sought to perpetuate Arda, to protect the lands. Yes I loathed Melkor, but Harry would not have cared if he had utterly destroyed Arda in his hunt." whispered Ceridwin, struck by the memories; "Such wrath he bore against Melkor I have never seen in any other being."

"But is Morgoth... Melkor, not destroyed?" said Eowyn.

"Eventually, I joined him as a grudging partner in his feud and managed to temper his rage. Together with an alliance of Valar, we captured Morgoth. But the Manwe the brother of Melkor, unable to understand the evil that corrupted Melkor, released him." the other woman continued, ignoring Eowyn for a moment; "Harry swore that if he saw Manwe again, he would seek the same vengeance as he sought against his brother. It was lucky that when the Valar returned that Manwe, afraid of Harry's power, purposely avoided him. Thus together with the human mariner, Earendil, he and I fought and destroyed Melkor's dragons and cast him in chains to the state of un-being that Harry sought. And in these battles, Beleriand itself was smote into the sea."

"Love is a wonderful and terrible power." Eowyn whispered.

"Aye, yet do not shy from it, as it can be a blessing like no other." said Ceridwin; "I would beg a boon of you, to ride with me today."

"To war?" asked Eowyn.

"To whatever comes our way." Ceridwin answered.

"I do not know if my king would allow it." Eowyn demurred.

"I can be fairly convincing." said Ceridwin, twirling a curved dwarf-made dagger around one hand, one of a set of weapons and armour gifted to the descended Maia by the dwarven master smith, Telchar of Nogrod.

* * *

**The eighth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age**

A few days later, the four figures on horseback rode up onto the crest of the hill overlooking the ancient ruins of the once grand city of Osgiliath. Three banners fluttered in the breeze, one being Harry's own battle standard, a slightly tattered blood-red flag with a howling wolf's head emblazoned in black on it. The second was the blue and gold penant of Lothlorien flying from Haldir's glaive, and third was the forest green with a horse's head, flying proudly from Eowyn's lance. Supposedly, according to her explanations, Ceridwin had brought Eowyn along as handmaid, a more implausible excuse he'd never heard.

"No mercy." Harry whispered; "Ceridwin, go with Haldir, take the archers and a hundred Titans, Eowyn, with me, we'll take what's left. Kill anything that stands in your path."

Ceridwin and Haldir simply nodded their heads before tapping their armoured heels against the flank of their horses, spurring them back to their small force. Harry trotted over to the ranks of his own men, with Eowyn following. Their chargers were pawing the ground, impatient to see battle. The men on their backs sat, silent, no shaking of spears, no rattling of shields. Utter silence, only interrupted by the sound of horses snorting and the hoof-beats of his own horse trotting up.

"Arrow formation." Harry barked; "The last five on each side move up behind the point unit. Eowyn, stay close to me, don't let yourself get cut off from the rest of us and surrounded."

"Aye." she replied, hefting her shield slightly on her left arm

The double arrowhead meant that after they'd burst through enemy lines that the ten inside the arrowhead would be able to burst out and encircle the front of the enemy with the main force behind the enemy. Quickly, the Titans shifted to their positions behind the hill, trotting forward as Harry raised his spear in the air, the blood-red tattered banner catching the breeze and unfurling properly.

He jerked the spear higher in the air as they crested the hill. The entire force of two-hundred men roared out defiance to the enemy in the ruined city before breaking into a charge. This had the intended effect, as they poured down the hill, orcs poured out of the city, forming a ragged line just as the cavalry fell upon them. The worst way to defend from cavalry was to form a long line and this was exactly what the orcs did.

Braced in the stirrups, stood up, Harry leaned forward, a grin on his face as an orc raised a pitchfork at him. He parried it aside with the spear and let go as the weapon buried itself in its throat. Eowyn hurled an axe with a vicious throw, embedding it in the head of an orc, bracing the banner of Rohan against her stirrups and drawing her sword. Harry drew his sword, Ringil, as he circled to the left, coming up behind the orcs. He dropped one with a brutal cleaving slash through its crude head-armour as his charger bucked his head, tossing an orc aside, impaled on the unicorn-like spike on his forehead.

The line of orcs was shattered. Titans rode up and down the line on each side, cutting down the monsters, running them through and impaling them on spears. They had opened up a path into which the remaining Titans, along with Haldir's mounted archers poured.

The next day was a massacre as the Titans hacked their way through the city, often treading the same streets time after time as they gradually made up ground. Spears were flung, swords sliced and arrows sought their targets as the powerful strike force rampaged through the ancient city, killing any of Sauron's creations they came across.

* * *

**The ninth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age**

Harry paced along one of the streets, Ceridwin on the other side from him and Eowyn close behind them, covering their backs as they hunted. It was near noon-tide when the distant sweeping of great wings was to be heard, and the great shadow of a Fell Beast covered the city. Harry and Ceridwin both reacted as Eowyn's shortbow didn't have the range for the approaching Nazgul.

Harry drew a yard-long barbed arrow from a quiver on his back, laying it on the bow and notching the string of the bow to the cut in the back of the shaft. Whipping back the string of the longbow, he released it, sending a yard-long arrow upward towards the lizard-like beast as it wheeled overhead. Opposite him, a shorter projectile was launched from a crossbow that Ceridwin had couched against her shoulder.

Immediately, a hail of arrows from elsewhere in the city joined their offerings, peppering the Fell Beast with elvish shafts, sending it plunging to the earth. Harry moved swiftly and whipped back the string, seating another arrow, this one with a ceramic tip which would shatter on impact, spreading a deadly toxin onto any flesh it touched.

With the Nazgul on its dead mount plunging straight towards them and couldn't miss. The toxic arrow hurtled towards the rider on its back. He'd calculated roughly the speed and angle of descent and was pleased to see that he truly couldn't have missed the corrupted being. However strong it was, the venom would destroy it.

A few minutes later, Harry and Eowyn joined forces with the elfin archers as Ceridwin took up position in a ruined tower from which her crossbow released its deadly payload.

"We found the body of the Fell Beast's rider, I didn't think that the Nazgul could die." stated Haldir as the two greeted each-other with a terse nod, hand holding a short bow with an arrow still resting on it.

"They can now." Harry smiled nastily; "But there are eight more, including the Witch King of Angmar. And they won't be pleased that one of their number is destroyed."

"Aye, and they come now." added Ceridwin as she dashed down the stairs of a ruined tower; "Harry, head up to the tallest point and try and bring as many down now. It's mere minutes until the Rohirrim arrive with Gandalf..."

He nodded and vanished silently, appearing atop the highest point of the city. He hadn't known the Rohirrim would invade Gondor, even if it was in spirit of comradeship, but he wouldn't question. Ceridwin could see things that no other, including he, were able to. Settling into a meditative trance, he stood, staff held in both hands on the edge of the ruined tower. As his magical senses flooded the ruins, he felt the incursion of the corrupted creatures that were the Nazgul.

Closing his burning emerald eyes, he felt out at the skies, churning up a storm of truly epic proportions. Harry continued pouring magic into the staff as a brisk wind rose, whipping his robes about him. He felt the magic as two of the Nazgul decended, circling around Ceridwin. She drove a spear into the underside of the belly of one Fell Beast before throwing a second, covered in the same deadly toxin straight into the chest of the second Nazgul. The moment that the first tumbled from his stricken beast onto the stones, it was hacked to bits by elvish blades, cut limb-from-limb.

Steadying his breathing, Harry began to chant in a tongue that served no other beasts or beings of Middle Earth, a forgotten tongue. Blasts of lightning began to issue from the black clouds overhead, hissing through the sky toward the flying monsters and their foul riders. It was draining, performing such powerful magics so often in a single day, but it was necessary.

He knew that Gandalf had made it to Minas Tirith ahead of the Titans and Elves, and had heard that the beacon of the White City had been lit, summoning aid from Rohan. He knew that Ceridwin had spent the days before the siege of Helm's Deep trying to rally aid, and that Theoden would find gathering soldiers far easier than he would have done without her aid. So he prayed that they were coming and that he could destroy the Nazgul before they inflicted immense casualties upon the Rohirrim.

A whispered word of power and he summoned all the destruction he could upon the foe. All but one of the Ring Wraiths were unmade, the last throwing himself from his steed and choosing to fall over being fried by hundreds of millions of volts of electricity. Harry left his trance, magic washing back into his body from where it had been bouncing around the city, supplying him with information. Below, the clatter of hooves and a loud snorting noise rang out as tired horses who had raced across the length of Rohan and south along the Anduin entered the city.

Dropping off the tower, he formed a cushion of magic around his feet for the landing. Looking around, Harry found his charger, a huge black horse, ironically named Winter, clattering his hooves against the worn cobbles of the ruined city. Sparks flew as the horse swivelled around, bucking slightly as his master appeared from above. A flick of Harry's hand and Winter trotted over, his, armour a mix of leather and chainmail, along with the forehead plate with a long spike on it clinking loudly with each powerful hoof-beat against the cobblestones.

Pulling himself into the saddle, Harry tapped his heels into Winter's flank and clattered off around the streets. He just arrived at where the Nazgul had landed to find it shuddering and thrashing in a magical grip some five feet from Ceridwin and ten feet off the ground, her hand held palm-out using magic to crush its throat.

The corrupted creature's weapons lay abandoned on the ground as it continued to thrash around, clutching at its neck as Ceridwin slowly squeezed the life out of it. Raising her right hand, a flanged mace materialised in it, with which she dealt a horrifically powerful blow to the head of the enemy. The fearsome helmet of the Witch King was soon mangled and the body of the once-fearsome creature lay limp.

A negligent gesture from Ceridwin and the corpse was hurled into a wall, limp and pitiful. She picked up his sword and threw it to Harry.

"Maybe you'll be able to do something better with it." she stated as Harry trotted over on Winter, grabbing her arm and hoisting her into the saddle behind him.

"Thanks love, but where're the Titans and the elves?" he asked, tucking the sword into a leather belt on the horse-armour.

"They've moved out with the remainder of Faramir's forces because the Rohirrim are about to sweep the city, I suggest we get clear." Ceridwin replied.

Harry immediately nudged Winter into a canter as Ceridwin wrapped her arms around his waist. A few Orcs got in their way and were hacked down for their trouble, but they arrived on the edge of the city just in time to see Gandalf at the head of a force of Rohirrim cavalry rampaging into the ruins. The broad streets of the ancient city would suit them well, while the Titans with the assistance of the Lothlorian elves would continue clearing the backstreets and alleyways of Sauron's orcs.

On the main street from the western walls to the Anduin bridge, orcs formed ranks, blocking the oncoming riders. Then from behind, led by Harry, Ceridwin and Eowyn on horseback, the Titans struck, followed by a barrage of elvish arrows from every ruined building that overlooked the orcish army. Caught between the charging Rohirrim, the steadfast Titans and a barrage of lethal arrows, the orcs broke ranks and tried to scatter but, hemmed in by the forces of the West and the stones of the ancient city, they had nowhere to go. Thus they died in such numbers that the Anduin for three days would run black with orcish blood.

* * *

In the woodland near Privet drive, two cloaked figures raced about as a heavily-bearded man in slightly-less-garish-than-usual robes appeared with his deputy, a severe looking woman in tartan robes, followed moments later by a sallow, hook-nosed man in billowing black robes.

"So, how does this work." asked Dumbledore.

An Unspeakable handed him a simple gold coin.

"This is a self-contained ritual which will, to put it simply, push you along the trace of the dimension-hop. Firstly, remember that your target may not be alive or he may only just have arrived, depending on the passing of time. Secondly, languages may be different, cultures. Even species." warned the Unspeakable; "However, feel free to take notes and samples to report back to us with."

The three took hold and the Unspeakable simply prodded the coin with his wand and walked away. Five seconds later, there was a bright flash and the three vanished, leaving just the hooded men.

"Well, that's done, back to base." ordered the Unspeakable as several more materialised out of the shadows; "If they don't come back we simply write it off as a bad Portkey."

* * *

**The tenth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age**

"It is not enough!" Harry barked, pounding his mailed fist on the table set in the centre of the ruined great hall of Osgiliath. It had been a night and half a day since the Rohirrim had cleansed the city, and now the council of war sat discussing the battles to come.

"What would you have me do?" asked Gandalf; "Saruman's fortress has been cleansed and with it much of his forces. The Nazgul have been wiped out and we've pushed back the armies of darkness to outwith the city."

"Yet we sit and debate while Sauron could be driving his minions west. And what of Saruman, for he is not easily defeated, he could be setting up a new breeding ground for the Uruk-hai as we lie inactive, licking our wounds." Harry replied with a sardonic raised eyebrow; "What I would have you do... Muster as many cavalrymen as you can here. Bring up the infantry and continue pushing back."

"I have to agree with Harry." Aragorn stated; "We're holding our own, but with the wraiths gone, along with over twenty-thousand of the various creatures the darkness have fielded against us. We should strike while the dark forces are scattered."

"Have we not suffered enough casualties?" Gandalf asked; "Is this not inviting more death and bloodshed than we would suffer if they struck here, for should we dig in and build our defences we might stand more hope against Sauron, and my old mentor Saruman lingers beneath the waters of the Isen."

"Death and bloodshed are a necessary part of war Gandalf, though I cannot pretend not to be glad that Saruman is ended. A most powerful speaker, a man who could persuade anyone to do anything..." said Harry; "However, how many cavalrymen do we have at readiness?"

"Four-thousand of Rohan's cavalry with more coming." replied the wizard; "But should we get Gondor's allegiance, we would also have several thousand infantry and cavalry."

"There are two places to cross the Anduin. Here and Cair Andros, upstream. I haven't had word from the garrison there for days, Aragorn, take a thousand men on the west bank up to Cair Andros, Ceridwin and I'll take fifteen-hundred up the east bank. Haldir, bring your archers and my Titans up the west bank along with any other infantry you feel like bringing." Harry ordered, gesturing to a map laid on the table; "Aragorn, your route is shorter, it'll take about four hours maximum to get there. My route is a bit longer, allow me an hour more and we'll hit them from two directions. Haldir, at a brisk march it'll probably take half-a-day on foot."

"And what then?" asked Eowyn, who was present in place of her father who had remained at Helm's Deep.

"We can either dig in and hold or take the sorcerer's suggestion and go on the offensive." stated the injured Faramir, son of Denethor the Regent, his arm in a make-shift sling; "I'd like to cement our position but not write off the idea of attacking. As long as Sauron still commands a single beast or being then we are at risk..."

"What stops further attacks here while you deplete our forces?" asked Gandalf, ever playing the devil's advocate, not wanting rash action to cripple the hope of the light.

"You will still have fifteen-hundred able cavalrymen, and whatever foot-soldiery we leave. You yourself said further men were on their way... remember that Sauron is a powerful, semi-immortal fallen deity bound to a single ring. However, he commands hordes of ill-bred beasts. We need to slight his fortresses and massacre his minions while your little friends hopefully can put an end to the man himself." Harry added.

"Isengard is gone, the Ents have razed it to the ground. Maybe there is true hope." conceded the wizard; "Go now and destroy that which should not exist. Sauron will wish to exact swift and terrible vengeance. Strike before he can, for now we see either the rise of freedom, or the fall of the free and the beginning of the rein of Sauron eternal."

Harry nodded to Aragorn as he and Ceridwin rose;

"Assemble your men, take a thousand, I'll take fifteen-hundred, if you encounter any more of our little enemies, drive them into the mud and bury them." Aragorn ordered coldly; "Two blasts on my personal horn and you attack. Eowyn, the warriors of Rohan are yours to command. Do so wisely."

Aragorn and Eowyn rose from their seats and followed the two sorcerers out, the four hoisting themselves into their saddles. A few short minutes later, Harry and Ceridwin sat on their horses, and after horns rang out over the floodplains of the river, a great host of cavalry, mostly lancers, a few mounted archers assembled before them.

* * *

In the back of a smoky tavern in the great, white-walled city of Tirith, ones eyes would simply skip over a table, seeing it and its occupants, but never really noticing either.

"Have you heard, Gandalf, the White Wizard rides east with an army from Theoden of Rohan." commented one tavern gossip.

"It's not Gandalf that should worry Sauron, he understands mercy and compassion, even on the battlefield. It is the Black Sorcerer who Sauron ought to fear. A more fearsome warrior I have never seen." interjected an off-duty soldier; "But also, the third mage, his woman fights ahead of the vanguard in any battle. She led two-thousand to relieve the siege of Helm's Deep. I am told that it was on her orders that Isengard was razed to the ground, though these are rumours only. Even the niece of Theoden of Rohan rides in the line of battle and is faster with sword, spear and axe than any amongst us."

"And more recently;" added another soldier who pulled off his helmet and pushed back his chainmail as he stepped in; "Word came from the ruins of Osgiliath that the last of Sauron's forces were driven back across the bridge of the Anduin and massacred by archers and cavalry, along with the Witch King of Angmar and every other Nazgul. The sorceress killed him personally and took Angmar's sword as a prize."

"I almost pity whatever evil builds in Mordor." commented the tavern maid; "Word is that even a hundred times over have a thousand of the abominations used by Sauron and Sarumen been slaughtered. At the Siege of Helm's Deep they were caught between a cornered animal in the fortress and Mithrandir's Rohirrim. Then the host of the black sorcerer fight through Osgiliath, killing any enemy that moves, and now they are joined by Mithrandir's host of the Rohirrim."

"What's scary is that the Black Istar could rule if he wanted... The heir of King Isildur, Aragorn, as well as King Theoden and Gandalf the Istar all bow before him. And if they didn't, he could easily raze Middle Earth to the fires of creation and recreate it in his image. Yet he is content to lead in battle." commented the second soldier; "I always wondered why some called him a 'Potter'. I learnt just days ago that a witness at Helm's Deep watched as he ripped up a battlefield and re-shaped it, huge pits, harnessed the falling water and the lightning. And with his woman, he released a most terrible of demons upon the Uruk-hai, smaller but more powerful than a Balrog. It didn't survive long under the numbers it opposed, but it still tore through them like a scythe through wheat. Now he sits at Osgiliath with the Council of War."

Dumbledore leaned forward across their table;

"Severus, try and get a map, and for Merlin's sake, don't draw attention to yourself. Minerva, we'll need three horses, I'll stay here and listen out for further information." he whispered.

* * *

**After the sun sets on the tenth day and before it rises on the eleventh day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age**

The orcs were holding the majority of Cair Andros save for a small part of the fortified island where the garrison and some civilians were holed up. The river soon ran black with blood as light cavalry struck from both sides in the darkness of the night backed by archers and the shock-warfare of the Titans.

Storming in, the streets were soon littered with the bodies of Sauron's minions as the island was once more overrun. The beleaguered garrison burst out, sallying forth to add another side to the attack on the now-beleaguered orcs. They were cut down without mercy, as every man and elf knew no mercy would be shown to them.

Several hours later, many miles south-east of Cair Andros, Harry smirked as he stood outside the spectral fortress of Minas Morgul. Once a great city, similar to Minas Tirith, spoken of in hushed awe as Minas Ithil, it was now soaked in dark sorcery and evil. Condemned.

Brandishing the Witch King's sword, he lit it up with flames and touched it to a long trail of oil running through the gutters of the dark citadel. Combined with his dark robes, the dark sword and some light touches of his magic to their minds persuaded the orcs guarding the citadel that he was indeed the deceased Witch King, so they didn't question his storing of Sauron's devil fire, a most powerful of explosives, in every building, with trails of the most flammable lamp oil stretching down to the gates.

Touching the sword to the oil, he strode out and ripped his staff from the earth, slamming the butt into the ground. Every gate in the ancient walls of the fallen city slammed closed, sealed with magic so that no amount of force could open them. The entire citadel was cut off. And burning. And full of explosives.

Neither he nor Ceridwin looked back as Minas Morgul was raised to the ground. Aragorn rode in wide-eyed silence while two-and-a-half thousand cavalrymen cheered behind them. The spoils of war were good, and they would win. Their commanders were two powerful sorcerers, each carrying the swords of the Nazgul, while their future ruler was a warrior who led by example, at the head of his men.

* * *

**The eleventh day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age**

Early that day, for the assembled soldiery in Osgiliath, the sun rose early, a great flaming ball on the eastern horizon... but it was not the sun. Minas Morgul crashed and burned, taking with it the remaining forces of the deceased (properly) Witch King of Angmar.

The cheering intensified as the host behind the sorcerers and Aragorn thundered onto the flood-plains to the east of the city, armour, spears and swords glinting in the sun as it truly rose. Gandalf, Faramir and Eowyn rode out to meet the victorious force along with a small bodyguard.

"Gentlemen." stated the wizard.

"Minas Morgul is nought but bad memories and rubble today." Harry yelled, eliciting cheering and rattling of weapons from behind him.

"Foolhardy." commented Gandalf; "But it paid off evidently. I do fear Sauron's reprisal."

"We'll need a few hours sleep... maybe until mid-morning, but then we'll be ready to march onward." Harry shrugged, wheeling about to face the cavalry; "DISMISSED. Get some sleep and clean your arms."

"I've got a total of six-thousand cavalry, four-thousand infantry and some other assorted allies who we can field." stated Faramir forcefully; "Our own reprisal on Sauron should be swift and terrible. Hundreds of years of wrath have we to deliver upon his diseased head."

* * *

**The twelfth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age**

A few hours later, Harry awoke to something scratching at a bit of exposed flesh between the arm of his chainmail and his plate gauntlet. Sitting up gently and taking care not to awake Ceridwin on whose armoured chest his head was resting, he slowly blinked in the sunlight.

Perched on the cobbles next to them was a gigantic eagle, one of their closest allies and companions looking far more agitated than was normal.

"Arne. What's the problem." he asked, seeing the great avian hopping from foot to foot.

"They come, in numbers and weapons far greater than our own. Marched by The Mouth to the Black Gates, every foul creature under Sauron's command is marching to the gates my lord." replied the eagle; "They will descend through the valley of Udûn to make war upon us. And at the same time Sauron rouses his army in Ithilien, orcs, machines of war and beasts of untold size ridden by legions from the Haradrim."

The eagle turned his head to gaze into Harry's eye, allowing the sorcerer's mind to brush over his. The images that came were of Mount Doom belching smoke over legions of orcs in such numbers as to terrify any good free man, elf or dwarf. Then similar numbers defiling the green and pleasant lands of Ithilien with dark sorcery, catapults, siege towers, rams and all machines of war that could be created. Creatures he had only seen rarely in the furthermost lands of Harad bearing towers of fabric and wood on their backs. What could truly be done in the face of such terrible enemies.

Harry immediately shook Ceridwin awake and relayed Arne's message. They quickly found their twin black chargers and pulled themselves into the saddle. Sparks were sent skittering as they galloped through the ruined city streets toward the ruined great hall where the commanders were certain to be.

Barely slowing as Winter leapt over the short flight of stairs into the hall, he only reined him in as they veered away from crashing into the table.

"Gandalf, Aragorn!" he bellowed; "Rouse the troops, Sauron's Mouth marches his host upon us via the Black Gates, while another force comes from the south, through Ithilien. We cannot defend Osgiliath sufficiently, we must either ride out and strike one or other army before they are ready or retreat. These ruins cannot be held against such numbers"

The wizard gave him a scrutinizing look and nodded before whistling. Shadowfax, the Istar's snow-white charger, trotted in, Gandalf's sword slung at his side.

"Aye, I'll rouse the troops. I'll have them assembled on the eastern plains in an hour, maybe less." he agreed.

"Go north, meet the Mouth. I will follow in time." Aragorn barked; "I have ridden in the face of death, but this time I will ride south with death at my back."

"You claimed their allegiance." Harry stated from atop Winter.

"Aye, the Cursed shall rip each orc that threatens our freedom limb from limb." said the Dunedain King with a savage smile; "I have sat by too long with such a weapon at my side... but now I shall be able to unleash it in such horrific glory that no orc will dare speak of it in a thousand years."

"And what of me sir?" asked Eowyn, walking in wearing her chainmail armour and bearing her sword.

"Women should not have to see the terror of the battlefield." stated Faramir.

"Enough Faramir, she has riden alongside me time and time again in the last few days and done me great service time and time again!" countered Ceridwin, her black charger Moonlight bucking slightly, kicking up more sparks; "And as a woman, have I not always fought in the vanguard. Let her come. Eowyn is cleansed of the delusions of honourable warfare, but she knows this world is not a pleasant place unless it is fought for."

Eowyn nodded and walked out, evidently intent on getting a horse, followed by the men. The hall quickly emptied, save for the two sorcerers.

"Love you." Harry whispered to Ceridwin; "Get through this alive, because I couldn't live without you."

"It isn't just you, stay alive sweetheart." she replied, embracing him, despite the layers of metal each was wearing. They did not need skin-to-skin contact to convey their love.

A moment later, the reverberating tones of a great horn sounded on the eastern plains as Eowyn and Aragorn came in wearing full battle armour.

"It's time." stated the heir of Isildur solemnly; "Ride north with all swiftness. Destroy all in your path. We can have no mercy for anyone who stands in our path. Faramir, to you I entrust my kingdom, do with it what you will if I do not return."

Faramir silently raised his hand to touch his forehead, a sign of deference. Gandalf, atop Shadowfax, Harry riding Winter, Ceridwin seated on Moonlight and Eowyn on Windfola clattered out of the hall. Harry snatched his banner from a soldier as he galloped through the streets toward the eastern floodplains. Leaning forward as far as he could with his great helmet mounted on the pommel of the saddle, he sped up as they were joined by Gandalf and his Titans who had procured their horses. The Rohirric battle standard in Eowyn's hand billowed out with the elvish penants and the blood red of the sorcerers over the column to a resounding cheer from the massed soldiery.

Galloping out onto the plains, they were greeted by a host of men, ranked two-hundred long and forty deep who rattled lances, axes and swords against shields. Meeting the head of the force, Harry wheeled the small column of just over three-hundred mounted men to face them, Winter bucking dramatically under him, his rider easily staying in the saddle as he was used to the horse's hi-jinks.

They were joined minutes later by a thousand elfin archers mounted atop white horses, falling into the back of the force.

"Today, TODAY, we ride for the Black Gates and Mordor. Let no faint-hearted man, woman or elf come for we face one of the greatest evils of this world. Sauron has dispatched his Mouth and a host of the most foul creatures who themselves march for the Gates. WE WILL MEET THEM ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE! SAURON IS A POWERFUL CREATURE, BUT WITHOUT HIS ARMIES, IS JUST THAT!" Harry thundered; "AND LET NO WARRIOR FALL AND HIS DEATH NOT BE AVENGED TEN-FOLD, NAY, A SCORE FOR EVERY MAN!"

He lobbed the banner to the commander of his Titans and drew the Witch King's sword, lighting it up with flames as he wheeled around. Dropping the sword to point north, he charged.

* * *

Hidden under numerous concealment spells at one side of the host, three riders clad in clothes which were utterly unremarkable watched and listened.

One sneered half-heartedly at the thunderous call from the head of the army. The second bowed her head, knowing there was nothing she could do to aid the son of her former pupils, and yet felt great pride at the person who was evidently a leader of men and all beings assembled. The third looked on calculatingly but with a slight look of approval.

"What do we do now Albus?" asked the second, a woman.

"Follow would probably be the best idea. I must say young Harry is a masterful orator, he'd make quite the politician." said the eldest male.

"Brat's too brash, a Gryffindor if I ever saw one." sneered the younger male; "A warrior maybe..."

* * *

**The nineteenth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age**

The ride to the Black Gates was long and tiring, lasting day after day, night after night for a whole week. The vanguard rode far ahead of the main host, and camped far ahead. Various ambushes were put down brutally, leaving the carcasses of assorted creatures strewn across the track.

Finally, after a night's camp not far from the Black Gates, they came to the hateful monolith, a sign of Sauron's dominion of Mordor, a once fertile and pleasant land, to find it seemingly deserted.

Sat astride Winter, Harry rapidly put together a plan, utilising every bit of his cunning and tactical genius, and had his men put it into action. Pits were dug in the mud in which the Titans hid, their mud-covered shields providing protection and camouflage. Arne reported that the Mouth and his army was massing on the far side of the gates, so, dismounting, Harry and Ceridwin strode forward.

"Let's make it through this and laugh as we remember a long-gone war." he said softly, his staff appearing in his hand, motes of powerful magic swirling around him.

"And let no other take Sauron's place." added Ceridwin, her staff appearing, flaring her magic, her appearance changing slightly, features lengthening to become far sharper, a more fierce visage.

The two began a slow chant, steadily increasing in speed and volume, the intensity increasing as motes of magic swirled around them. Gandalf too began to murmur words of power, each elf backing them picking up the chant. Finally, the three mages lunged their staffs in the direction of the gates. An immense shockwave formed up and drove towards the the Morannon. The blast drove into the Black Gates, stone falling rapidly from the shattered facade of the gates, falling to the earth as the magic tore into them.

Repeating this once more, the stone was finally torn asunder and cast into the army hidden beyond, dust rising from the earth and stone crumbling into rubble. Slowly, before their eyes, the stone and rubble began to collapse, falling, crushing orcs and Uruk-hai before turning to dust, obliterated by their spellwork.

Slowly, a powerful, sinister figure rode forward backed by fifty monsters to where the two stood. Harry wound two blasts on his horn and the host of cavalry came up from beyond a ridge behind them, still hundreds of feet off from where they stood, backed directly by Gandalf and Eowyn.

"So, the messenger comes forth where his master cannot." Harry taunted; "Sometimes I doubt Sauron's existence, other times I doubt his well-being if he never appears- I do hope he isn't permanently incapacitated."

"Be silent sorcerer." hissed the Mouth; "I have come to offer you a place as one of My Lord's lieutenants, if you but bend your knees to him, and that the lands east of the Anduin River shall not be razed to the ground if they pay tribute to Mordor and cease bearing arms against Sauron the Great."

"You mistake us." thundered Gandalf; "We are not here to beg the mercy of Sauron, accursed that he is, we are here to see you destroyed and all with you. I bring a message from Aragorn son of Arathorn, whose line The Deciever has wronged. He demands that the armies of Mordor are to disband without delay and that he is to depart these lands, never to return and never to do ill upon a living creature again!"

The Mouth hissed as Gandalf's immense magical power descended on him, the voice of the Maia sounding like great bells in his ears, and the man himself burning in white light to someone as steeped in darkness as the Fallen Man.

"Tell Mairon the day he bends his knee to us, pays tribute to the men of the west, we shall not raze his fortresses to the earth and obliterate his armies." Ceridwin added, causing the Mouth to hiss in anger at her utter defiance. She held the fallen man in a burning gaze, one of utter contempt.

"I give you one last chance, prostrate yourselves before me and beg for the mercy of Sauron the Great!" the Mouth ordered.

"Thanks for the offer." began Harry.

"But no." finished Ceridwin.

A moment later Fingolfin's keen point pierced through the Mouth's helmet and deep into his head. Before Harry could withdraw it, under his arm Ceridwin's curved scimitar hissed through the air and severed the diseased Mouth's neck, hacking his head from his shoulders. A third weapon, a spear hurled from one of the Titans embedded itself half the length of its shaft in the Mouth.

"The guard!" yelled the leader of the Titans.

Harry and Ceridwin wheeled around to see fifty Uruk-Hai and orcs charging towards them. They split left and right, with their own guard, Gandalf, Eowyn and Aragorn charging forward.

It took less than two minutes for them to hack their way through the enraged bodyguard the Mouth of Sauron had brought, using no magic, using no more than their blades. As Gandalf, Eowyn and Aragorn galloped back to their lines, Harry wound another blast on his horn.

Elven archers dashed out from between the cavalry, bows half-drawn with arrows nocked. Harry and Ceridwin knelt briefly as the archers raised their longbows and unleashed a hailstorm of barbed arrows into the charging army, which, though deprived of its leader, was still intent on attacking.

After two volleys hissed over their heads, the momentum of the charging army was thoroughly broken. Exchanging a glance with Ceridwin, Harry wound another blast on his horn. Swords in hands, he and Ceridwin strode forward as the hidden Titans burst from their hidey holes, mud quickly falling from their shields.

The first attack was repulsed with such ferocity, combined with the ever-present arrows which fell a long way ahead of the Titans, in the depths of Sauron's forces, that the attackers fell back a good distance, leaving the blood-spattered Titans stood triumphant on heaps of bodies of orcs and Uruk-hai. Near a thousand lay dead, pierced by arrows, cut by swords or destroyed with the most powerful of magics.

"FORM SQUARE!" Ceridwin screamed as orcs mounted on wargs attacked.

Where a line of men would have broken, the Titans, who quickly formed a square, pushed off the attack, breaking its momentum again and falling on the wargs and their riders with swords and spears. Soon, the attack failed, the bodies littered around the small unit showing how disorganized shock-warfare couldn't triumph over fast-moving but disciplined defence. They had run at the shields of the Titans, half slaughtered by arrows before they could make contact with those same shields, then as they closed the distance, the orcs and wargs were peppered with axes, javelins and spears hurled at them. Those that survived were slaughtered as they impacted the wall of metal.

Striding back to their horses, Harry and Ceridwin climbed into the saddle, the former pulling on his grim-looking great helmet as they cantered back to their lines, followed by the Titans who ran back at a rapid pace, having retrieved the thrown spears from the bodies of those pierced by them.

With the enemy still in disarray after the furious defence, Ceridwin saw lines forming, two deep, across the width of the valley, orcish infantry.

"Hit them with the cavalry!" she called to Harry.

Harry grinned widely, a vicious grin, and once more raised his horn, carved from the fang of a great, long-deceased dragon, to his lips. Five long, loud blasts echoed across the battlefield.

The first five ranks of the forces of men and elves, each made of two-hundred cavalry, broke forward and charged. Pennants on spears fluttered, brightly coloured in contrast to the dull, hateful dimness of Mordor. With their leaders at their head, the first two Cohorts galloped forward.

Being the first to hit the disarrayed enemies at the head of a thousand men, Harry and Ceridwin on Winter and Moonlight pulled their horses into a jump. The armoured mounts smashed into the first couple of ranks before hooves began to fly and the long spikes on their forehead armour were used to pierce the orcs. They each delivered a single spearthrust before chucking them into the orcs and drawing their swords.

The line quickly broke as the faster cavalry moved beyond the line of orcs and circled around, within minutes a thousand of the malformed beasts were strewn across the width of the Morannon. With disarrayed orcish soldiery, the cavalry quickly eliminated two more small groups of them before falling back.

Without the time to organize their archers to counter the charge, or even form a wall of spears, Sauron's forces had no defence against the speeding cavalry that had hit them with such power and momentum, smashing them back with the sheer force of the charge. The horsemen wielded their spears, axes and swords brutally, showing no quarter, quickly and efficiently disposing of their opponents. No man spared an ounce of force behind his blows, for he knew that there was no mercy for him should he show any to his enemies.

The fighting had been hard, fast, brutal and fluid, leaving the frontal forces of Sauron's army utterly decimated and in absolute disarray. With the Titans covering their backs, the first two cohorts of the Rohirrim and assorted other allies fell back to their own lines. After providing a rearguard, the Titans too withdrew, leaving a trail of bodies behind them. As they jogged back, elven arrows hissed overhead, seeking targets in the remainder of the front of the dark army.

Harry kept track of the orcish army, and seeing five square-formed groups of orc infantry formed up and marching forwards, he turned and galloped along the line of the army of the light. As he passed with his sword raised high, he heard bows being drawn to full extension, and when his sword fell, a thousand arrows buzzed through the air, falling onto the hundred-strong squares of orcs.

Twice more they volley-fired, and while the five-hundred were not all dead, such were the losses, that as reinforcements raced up from behind, still in disarray, the formations collapsed.

The two cohorts of cavalry who had charged, had also headed to the rear of the army of the west to rest and recuperate. At the opposite end of the battlefield, as disorganized reinforcement combined with three volleys of arrows decimating them, the orcish squares had collapsed. Harry raised his dragon-fang horn, and moments later another five blasts of a horn rang out, rousing the cavalry again.

Hooves thundered across the plane as another two cohorts charged, sweeping up the remains of the squares and the reinforcements, who were single orcs just running to join their fellows, instead of any organized advance, allowing a complete massacre.

For hour after hour, the same tactic repeated. When lines of orcs formed up, they were swept up by cavalry. When there was a charge, the Titans took the brunt of it and massacred the attackers. When squares of orcs formed up, the archers softened them, allowing fresh cavalry to utterly destroy them, an eventual retreat backed by the Titans who fought long and viciously, followed by more arrows, then fresh cavalry.

Their horses long abandoned and returned to their allies' lines, Harry and Ceridwin carved a bloody path into the depths of Sauron's army, finally settling where they fought on a great mount of orc corpses which ever-grew as sorcery and blades killed ever more.

Despite neither having the great bulky stature of some of the great warriors behind them, the two punched well above their weight, leaving a fifty-foot radius area around them where bodies were strewn and few dared come into, for fear that the roots would crush them, fire consume them, or lightning cook them... it was a long list of many ways to die, and the radius was ever expanding.

Eventually four cohorts simultaneously attacking along with the cover of the elven archers and the brutal swordsmanship of the Titans allowed them to break through to where the two mages were reaping hell upon the orc army. With their horses following behind.

Harry and Ceridwin quickly mounted up and joined the routing of Sauron's army, few escaping the less-than-tender mercies of their own army.

* * *

**The twenty-fifth day of the third month in the three-thousandth and nineteenth year of the Third Age**

Galloping forward fast, Harry lifted himself in the stirrups as Winter pitched a Black Uruk over, pierced by his forehead-spike in a brutal headbutt. With momentum and his balanced position, Harry used it to inflict a most terrible of blows on a second Black Uruk, cutting it from the helmet-covered cranium deep into the neck.

Slowing to a canter, he continued deeper into the gorge where more Uruks fled. Winter had became nervous, the foul air and sinister atmosphere disturbing him, though not stopping him from biting, kicking and spearing the creatures on the spike on his forehead.

A thick mist slowly descended and Harry slowed somewhat, beginning to wheel about to return to the main force when the whistle of a crossbow bolt rang through the mist moments before one slammed into the armour under his cloak, pinning it to him as the momentum threw him from the saddle. Cursing, he ripped the cloak off as it was impeding his movement, being held to the armour by the bolt.

"I liked that cloak!" he hissed at the group of fifty or more Black Uruks descending toward him from both sides of the gorge. A single glance had Winter galloping off back to the marauding army which had been cleansing Mordor of Sauron's hordes for over a week.

Raising his empty hand, Harry summoned the Uruk crossbowman to him, splitting his skull with a heavy sword-blow before the creature had even landed.

"_**You've been troublesome sorcerer." **_stated a voice using the Black Speech; **_"I believe that your end is nigh!"_**

"_**I shall take pleasure in returning you to the nothingness from which you came." **_Harry spat back in that same harsh, grating and foul language.

Stepping through the ranked Uruks who had poured down the sides of the gorge was a heavily-armoured figure somewhat taller than Harry, a spiked crown adorning his helmet and a massive flanged mace hanging from one gauntleted hand.

"_**I am immortal, foolish one. Were my Uruks not about to rip you limb from limb and devour you, I would offer you the same." **_chuckled the armoured figure sinisterly.

"_**Sauron, deluded and befouled, your end is nigh."** _Harry replied in an equally glacial tone.

Two steps to the right. One kick. The wince-inducing snap as the Uruk, who had just missed Harry with an over-extended axe-swing, suffered from a broken neck seemed to break a dam as the rest rushed him. They poured towards him, but then, Harry created a spear in his left hand. Those who could avoid the lethal thrusts of the spear inevitably fell to the brutal cuts delivered by the sword once held by the so-called Witch King.

But, all too soon, it was the master he had to face. Dodging, he avoided the howling descent of the mace on where he had been, Sauron's first attack. He was quick however to sweep the weapon around toward Harry who spun around and blocked the jarring blow with his sword, attacking by slicing at the gap at the hinge of Sauron's armoured knee.

Harry grunted in anger and swung the third sword of the fight at Sauron. His great battle staff was too many feet away to be easily reached, knocked out of his hand with nearly enough force to dislocate his wrist. One of the Nazgul blades was shattered on the ground, with shards of metal lodged in the seams of Sauron's armour. The Dark Lord wasn't too well off either. His armour was burnt, electrified, mangled and torn, but he was steadily gaining ground on the smaller, weaker human.

Sauron's darkness reached out, stifling the magic as the mage once again prepared to vanish. Cursing, Harry ran under the overhead blow of the mace, sword outstretched toward the armoured monstrosity. As he knew would happen, the hateful wail of pain came from the helmet as the sword sank in-between seams of armour before shattering.

A bellow of pain was released forcefully from Harry's lungs as Sauron backhanded him with his gauntleted left hand, sending him spinning into the rocks. Grabbing an Uruk sword, he rolled to his feet and slammed the spike of the sword into Sauron's shoulder, wrenching him forward before shattering the sword over his head.

The sound of his ribs breaking was as audible as the roar of agony as Sauron swung his mace straight into Harry's side, smashing him into the wall of the gorge once more. Gesturing with his left hand, Harry banished a dead Uruk into the armoured monolith with all his magical power.

Sauron was knocked over, only to gruesomely smash the corpse into the wall of the gorge with his mace before getting back to his feet. Summoning his staff to his hand, Harry directed an explosive blast at Sauron before running a glowing hand over his ribs. It would be awful after a few days, but he was able to continue fighting for the moment.

Getting to his feet, Harry quickly animated the corpses around him and set them on Sauron. It was barely a distraction as the armoured monstrosity smote each of them, one after another with the massive mace clutched in his gauntleted hands. His hellish scream rang out once more as Harry hosed him down with acid.

He leaned backward quickly as Sauron's mace swung at him. Not far enough. The edge of one of the flanges bit onto the lower edge of his great helmet and ripped it from his head, smashing it into unrecognisable scrap against the rocks. Harry conjured a sword, vanishing his staff back into the ether where it went when not being used. A flurry of berserk blows beset Sauron, the last one striking him, cutting deep along another seam in the armour of his right shoulder.

"_**You!**_" bellowed Sauron upon seeing Harry's face in the light cast by the flaming Witch King's sword.

"_Mairon, you must have suspected that more than one of the oldest of beings would survive in this land._" Harry panted, holding off Sauron's mace with sheer strength and more than a little magic, yet he smirked, eyes burning as he taunted Sauron in Valarin, the language of the Valar; "_We last met at the door Angband, I smote your beloved dragon, Thorordaub and wear her hide to protect me from your minions. You still give her purpose._"

Sauron suddenly allowed Harry to drive his mace upwards with the blade of his sword. Then suddenly, as he was losing his balance, an armoured fist slammed into his stomach, sending him tumbling to the valley floor. Before he could react, Sauron was upon him, driving the head of his immense mace upon the conjured shield that Harry bore, and with that one blow, it was shattered beneath the flanges of the terrible weapon, and a second blow bent the plate armour on his shoulder, only the dragon hide and chainmail underneath stopping it killing him.

Harry summoned Ringil from the nether world it rested in, as Sauron cast aside his mace, picking up Angmar's flaming blade and preparing to end the fallen sorcerer. Harry tried to heal himself again, but the oppressive presence of Sauron constrained his magic, it let him down. His immortality only stopped him ageing, a sword through his heart, or indeed a great mace wielded by Sauron would spell his end. All he could think was that he wished he could see Ceridwin once more.

Throwing himself to his feet, eyes alight with berserker rage and a mask of unholy glee, Harry drove Ringil against Angmar's blade, the clash of steel shaking the earth as two superhuman beings fought. Sauron was flung backwards as his enemy drew lightning down onto the elvish sword and spun it into a shield which he then slammed into the dark lord.

Sauron withdrew his oppressive magics, concentrating instead on forging the darkness into a shield of his own to deflect any further magics. Harry, feeling his control of his own and Arda's magic, drove himself upon Sauron, Ringil thrust forward toward the dark lord. Sauron blocked the thrust and swung Angmar's sword down at Harry's head.

Once again, Fingolfin's blade rose, horizontal above his head to parry the cleaving blow. Then, pushed to a crouch by the force of the blow, the elven sword sang through the air as it looped about Harry's head and sliced across the weakest point of the armour about Sauron's foot. A wail of agony departed the head of the monolithic armoured being, followed by another sword-swing, carving a furrow a yard deep and twice as long in the ground.

Sauron pulled the sword from the ground and drove it, flames blazing black around the blade, at Harry, who brought Ringil up, smacking aside the cursed sword and lunging at Sauron. A faint clink was audible as the very tip touched Sauron's armour, scarring it before Harry was thrown aside by a blow from the dark lord's arm. Crumpled on the grass, he kept a deathly grip on the elvish sword.

"_**I remember you, Dushorrat, sorcerer of darkness. You, who are so dark as to destroy anything that comes in your path, and yet you claim the companionship of a being of light. Deluded, she should have been with my master, he offered to make her his consort with such generosity that she spurned him and cursed his name**_**.**" growled Sauron; "_**And you stood between her and the Lord of the Dark. Maybe she can kneel by my side when you are destroyed. She is not far after all...**_"

Sauron picked up his mace in his offhand, moving ponderously towards the crumpled form. Then he paused, whispering in the Black Speech as he warped the magic around him into tendrils of darkness which he directed at the bodies strewn around them, both the Black Uruks and beings dead long before, three thousand years they had rested in the ground of Mordor, for it was not clean enough to be described as earth, since the besieging of Sauron's fortress.

Harry picked himself up, leaning heavily on the sword, summoning his battle staff to him. He found himself stood fifty feet from his enemy with a hundred corpses around him. The Uruks he had just killed right down to what looked like the skeletons of men, elves and orcs. Cursing Sauron's defiling of the dead, he attacked. Driving the butt of the staff into the ground he unleashed a shockwave of magic, blasting apart the most decayed skeletons, the ones with no muscle nor flesh to hold together the bones.

One of the Black Uruk corpses barged forward, bulling into two half-decayed elves and throwing their limbs apart. The charging beast met a flash of elven steel as Ringil struck halfway up his head, followed by a sweep at hip level. Devoid of a mind and without legs to advance, the dark lord abandoned that being. It was near impossible and very draining to repair and reanimate the previously reanimated.

Standing his ground, Harry wielded Ringil and his staff with such ferociousness that even Sauron felt fear. After so many blows, the sorcerer still stood and fought. The skeletons had made up about a quarter of the reanimated, another quarter being the half-decayed, the rest the recently-slain Black Uruks. He had already destroyed a quarter, and quickly worked his way through the rest, mechanically cutting the legs out from under them and severing their heads.

"_Mairon, you truly fear me so much that you desecrate the bodies of the long dead in such desperation at my presence?_" Harry asked with a chilling laugh.

"_**I FEAR NO BEING, LIVING OR DEAD!**_" howled the fallen Maia, charging.

Harry stood his ground still, even as Mordor shook to the impacts of Sauron's armoured feet. He smiled in grim satisfaction as he saw a noticeable limp.

"_You forget what I am. Darker than darkness itself when roused. The Flame of Ud__û__n is but a mere fancy, a failed imitation of my magic. Cast your cursed soul into the abyss or face judgement before your maker._" he roared in defiance of Sauron.

The distance was swiftly closed and the dark lord cast himself at Harry, who met him blow for blow. They were evenly matched in power as Mairon had been possibly the most powerful of the Maia, yet he was corrupted and reinforced with the evil that he had immersed himself in. Brandishing his staff at Sauron, Harry drove him back, two immense blows of the dark mace leaving craters knee-deep in the ground, but both missed their intended target.

A wave of black magic was sent his way, the armoured monolith issuing the dark smoke from a glowing mace-head. Harry held out, the eerie green glow of the crystal at the head of his staff rejecting the waves of black corruption. Ringil vanished from his hand as he placed both gauntleted hands on the wood and murmured an ancient spell.

Sauron was suddenly beset by his greatest nightmares. Love, freedom, _a lack of order_. He saw his own flames turn against him, consuming himself. Gathering his willpower, he pushed against the spell and returned to the real world. He was beset on all sides by real flames of such dark malice as to truly make him afraid. His gleaming armour scorched, the earth around him was blackened and cracked, even as he stood, the metal that protected him, bound with such enchantments as have never been replicated was beginning to buckle.

Hurling his mace at what he judged to be the source of the flames, Sauron charged, his chief lieutenant's weapon held high. Harry was prepared, he had seen the mace coming and dodged. The monolithic figure charged straight onto an immense mithril spear which sank straight into Sauron's stomach, piercing his armour at one of the seams.

The corrupted Maia slowly sank to his knees, head bowed. Harry summoned Ringil to his hand and stepped forward when cold, chillling laughter came from the fallen Sauron.

"_**Ha ha ha ha... You believe such a mere wound can undo one such as me... I am death itself...**_" Sauron laughed, drawing the mithril shaft from his body and throwing it aside.

He struck with renewed fervour as Harry staff vanished. Angmar's sword locked against the guard of Ringil, Sauron was still on the back foot, with Ringil pressing down towards his head. Ever so slowly, the sorcerer's magical strength pushed down on him, the tip of the blade driving a deep horizontal channel in the mask of Sauron's helmet over his right cheek, the darkness imbued in the metal unable to stand the elvish blade, used for nothing but the eradication of evil.

Then suddenly, Sauron burst forth. He leapt to his feet and drove Harry back with a series of ferocious blows, exchanged faster than the eye could see. Sparks flew from the battling swords, then the sorcerer was sent once again to the ground as Sauron swept his feet from under him and drove Angmar's sword towards his head. With only moments to act, Harry jerked his head over to one side, and the cursed steel slammed into the ground next to him, leaving a thin, long cut along his cheek which welled with blood.

Harry threw Sauron aside with a blast of magic, sending him spinning into the rocky wall of the valley before standing. The presence of the dark lord was ever oppressing him, the battle sapped his strength, the wounds sapped his mental strength, messages of pain entering his mind despite the spells he layered upon himself.

They both stood, swords borne in both hands above their heads as they clashed. Harry feinted towards Sauron's head, withdrew his sword and lunged at his torso. Sauron wailed as the elvish sword slammed through a seam of his armour, grabbed Ringil and Harry's hand, pushing them back from him. The blade was black with blood, but the dark lord wasn't finished. He struck fast, slashing Angmar's sword across Harry's stomach and then, as his enemy fell to his knees, struck him from behind with a brutal swing.

That was when the gorge rang out with a scream of of pure and utter fury met Harry's ears, along with the powerful hoof-beats of a war horse. His vision recovered just enough to see the fan of black hair and the burning golden eyes of his beloved atop a galloping Moonlight. Further behind were four figures he could not make out, also on horseback.

Throwing herself from the saddle with all the momentum of the charge, the enchanted sword she and Harry had spent years enchanting for just such a purpose delivered such a terrible blow that it rent Sauron's armoured head in two. That was the same moment as the ever-watchful and sinister eye began to shudder before imploding many miles away, but still visible. The armour before them and the dark creature within was nothing more than that.

Sauron had fallen. His immortality rendered null by two Hobbits and one mutation of a Hobbit, and his life rendered nil by a sorcerer and his sorceress. Slowly, Harry fell onto the hard, unforgiving ground of Mordor, his dragon's hide and mithril armour laid open by the brutal cuts of Sauron, armed with the Witch King's sword.

Rolling off Sauron's destroyed armour, Ceridwin found the sword in her hand was shattered. Not having time to celebrate the downfall of the darkness, she moved over to Harry, who lay face-down on the ground. His robe was rent down the length of his torso, blood soaking through and pooling on the ground. He was barely breathing. Cursing silently, she drew a knife from inside her own robe and quickly sliced through the fabric of his, pulling it off and throwing it aside.

His armour had been torn open at the back, cut with such ferocity that Angmar's sword was chipped, bent and blunted. Fingers trembling, she raced to undo the vambraces and rerebraces so she could lift the torn chainmail and dragonhide shirt off his torso and arms. When she had finally lifted his layers of armour, she found the wounds on his back and front to be terrible, cursed and deep. Swiftly slicing up his robe, Ceridwin bandaged the one on his front as it was the easiest to keep closed.

"Eowyn, Kingsfoil, Athelas!" she yelled as the young horsewoman finally made up the distance between them; "He is sorely wounded and treads the line between life and death!"

Ceridwin resumed trying to stabilise Harry, whose breaths came in ever-shorter gasps. The words that left her mouth were not shaped as any known on Middle Earth. It was a song of pain, of loss, of gain. Slowly she drew the curse left by Angmar's blade and reinforced thrice by Sauron from his flesh, accepting it upon herself.

As Eowyn rode off at a gallop in search of Athelas, Ceridwin continued her dirge, visible wisps of dark magic leaving the wounds and coming toward her when a second horse, one she didn't recognise, a bay Gondorian horse, approached. The rider slipped off, a sinister dark-haired man of slight build, long hair and a once-broken nose.

"Move aside." he instructed in hesitant Westron, evidently not his first language, kneeling next to Harry.

She was still drawing toward her the dark magic embedded in the wounds when the man muttered an incantation in no language she recognised and transformed a nearby rock into a rat and grabbed it before it could move. Suddenly, Ceridwin felt a tug and the fell magic was being pulled away, into the rat.

Unresisting, she watched the foreign magic at work as the dark magic was fully drawn from the wounds into the rat. Picking up her dagger, she quickly dispatched the rock-turned-rat making sure that the dark magic died with it. Even in such vermin, having the Morgul magic of Sauron and the Witch King around was worrisome. Thus dispatched by the dwarven blade, it could not do harm.

Gradually, Harry's breathing evened out as the two, working hard cleaned and closed the sword wounds. Ringil lay to one side, still clutched in their patient's hand. Though it took some time, she was relatively sure that Harry was stable, but then the man helping her heal him withdrew several vials from his long, black coat. Ceridwin's paranoia burned, she dived for Ringil, prising it from Harry's fingers, and a moment later, knelt with the tip of the sword at the man's throat.

"Put aside your poisons." she snarled.

"They are... not dangerous." he stuttered; "They heal, make blood recreate..?"

Slowly Ceridwin lowered the sword, nodding for him to administer them.

"Pray that if they do him harm, that you are dead before I can bring my wrath upon you." she warned.

"I do not wish him harm." the man assured her.

Eowyn rode up with the precious Kingsfoil in a leather pouch which she threw to Ceridwin from a distance.

"We must take him to Minas Tirith, the Halls of Healing." Eowyn stated, jumping from her horse.

"Give us time." Ceridwin replied.

* * *

Harry's vision slowly faded into being from the darkness to which it had succumbed, moments after Sauron was struck down, awakening to see a head of black hair laid on his chest, only a thin sheet of smooth cotton between them. Smiling faintly at the sleeping Ceridwin, he returned to unconsciousness once more.

She was still asleep when he next awoke, this time gently trying to slip out from under her. Then he suddenly felt lines of fresh scar tissue tense across his back and front. The dull ache that he'd first felt as he awoke vanished, replaced with untold agony and the chilling memory of the blade in Sauron's hand cutting through his armour. Harry slowly slumped against the head of the bed when Ceridwin began shaking.

"_Eru... no, don't leave me Harry... not now, not after what we've been through together... stay with me!_" she whispered.

For a moment, he was frozen, not realising that he had stepped so close to death itself. But then his emotions took over and, regardless of the pain, he pulled her up against him, stroking her hair as she relaxed against his shoulder. Harry found Ringil embedded in the door, looking like someone had thrown it with great strength, while the dagger he usually slept with under his pillow was beside the bed on a low table, with his staff leaning against the wall.

Slowly, and in some pain, he levered himself out from under his beloved. On his finger was a ring, not unlike Sauron's, but simply filled with his presence. He slid it onto one Ceridwin's fingers, so that she would still, subconsciously, feel him. Sighing, he summoned a simple black robe which he belted around his waist, placing the sheath for Ringil at his left hip and drawing the sword from the door and after pulling on a pair of his dragonhide boots, picked up his staff, leaning heavily on it as he exited.

Outside the healing halls, he found Winter and Moonlight stood in a small stable. Running a hand down the flanks of the two horses fondly, he saddled up Winter and, with a mounting block to aid his still-weak body, hoisted himself into the saddle. Before departing the stable, he gave Moonlight a light pat and a grin. If it hadn't been for two fantastic horses and a fantastic woman, he'd be long-dead.

Trotting quietly through the fading evening light as it slowly vanished from Minas Tirith, he made his way up to the seventh level, where the great hall and the White Tree of Gondor were. Dismounting as he approached the Citadel Guards, robed in velvet and wearing helmets with white swan wings, he passed Winter's reins to one of them, limping toward the great doors of the Citadel's Tower Hall.

The ever-present Citadel Guards stood on the inside slightly started as a deep pounding sound came from the doors. They pulled them open as Harry lowered his staff. He entered, still leaning heavily on the staff as he returned the bows of the door wardens before they shut the doors. He limped in, the beat of the staff against the marble ringing loudly with each blow of the staff upon the marble. Harry raised an eyebrow seeing Faramir lounging on the lower stairs of the high dais holding the thrones of the King and the Steward, his arm around Eowyn while Aragorn and Gandalf paced agitatedly.

"Lords, my lady. Your Majesty" Harry said weakly.

"Ah, Harry, we weren't expecting you." said Gandalf.

"Denethor?" asked Harry.

"Succumbed to the madness." Faramir said with a tired, sad smile.

He bowed his head in silence for a few moments before Aragorn entered the conversation.

"Since Sauron was destroyed we've pressed the advantage further. Pirates sailed up the river but we wiped them out before their boats could dock. The force Sauron had mustered a force south of Osgiliath was marching north as his spies saw you depart north, including their most powerful siege weaponry. A debt was owed by ones of great power to my line, I unleashed them upon the orcs, Haradrim and assorted servants. We simply await word of Frodo and Sam, as nothing has come from them since the destruction of the ring." he commented, descending from the dais; "And of you? I learnt your bore great injury in the name of freedom, and it seems you have yet to recover your full strength."

"Frodo and Sam will return to us when they can escape the inferno that flows from Mount Doom." Harry sighed, his hand clasping his staff as he muttered a prayer for the Hobbits; "My injury was less than that taken by many who have stood in the path of evil and I bear it without bitterness. Mayhap you could tell me how long it has been since Sauron fell?"

"Ten days, the Lady Ceridwin's healing saved many a life including yours I am told. She and a healer of a name I do not know have released hundreds of men back into the line of battle, our forces continue to grow in strength, driving the remainder of Sauron's forces into the mud with evermore ferocity." Faramir interjected.

"Sauron is gone. It is inevitable that the remains of his armies are driven into the darkest crevices of Middle Earth if they survive the scourge we wield upon them."Aragorn growled, before slumping slightly and sighing; "We still have fourteen-hundred years of damage to heal. Both physical and mental. Lothlorien is sending a legion of craftsmen to help repair the city and then the rest of the realm, and they will help heal the minds and bodies of Gondor and Rohan."

"Ah, but it is not the engineers or the craftsmen you await so eagerly." Harry smirked, still capable of great humour even in his tired, stooped state.

"And the Duns send ambassadors to us, those who made war upon us and were captured are currently at work repairing what can be done by unskilled labour." Aragorn continued, 'not hearing' Harry's comment.

"Alatar and Palandar were persuaded alongside Radagast to fight at Dale against the Easterlings, and triumphed with far less lost than we expected, especially with the enchanted defences and traps you laid upon the city." Gandalf added; "King Theoden and his riders still maraud across Mordor and the borders, destroying what little of Sauron's army that remains. The Dead People have been released from their oaths after they ravaged the Easterling armies which marched upon us, prompting the Easterlings to make diplomatic entreats to us."

"Excellent, excellent." Harry mused; "What about your coronation _King_ Aragorn." he added, taking great pleasure in Aragorn's uncomfortable expression. "Indeed, you have done nothing with your title, have you."

"You try being king then!" exclaimed Aragorn; "It's so uncomfortable, I'm a soldier, a ranger, never a ruler, yet I've had the crown thrown at my feet with the orders to place it upon my brow."

"I've never been one to rule, too much paperwork and diplomatics, not much fun." Harry snorted; "But people need a leader, even with Sauron gone. Aside from the number of Uruks and Orcs you've killed, somebody else would have killed them, but what have you brought them? Hope! Leadership! A symbol to follow. Do not throw that in their faces, some men are destined to lead, some to follow, some like myself do neither, I do what I like. You're a leader, a ruler. As the morn comes in a few hours, let us ride through the city, let the people speak of and to you!"

"He is right." Faramir nodded.

"Indeed, I thank you Harry." said a musical voice as a feminine figure slipped through the doors.

"My lady." Harry bowed to Arwen, the woman who he was certain would become queen before turning to address Faramir, his voice ringing around the great marble and granite hall; "Shall we delay the ride through the city, as I doubt that we shall see Aragorn for some many hours yet."

Shooting him a glare, Arwen swept over, looking him up and down with piercing grey eyes, cast into a purple colour by the lighting of the Tower Hall;

"I do not believe your strength is sufficient to suffer such a parade through the city, you stand only by the strength of your hand upon your staff and little more." she stated.

"And yet I do still stand." Harry replied, somewhat short of a riposte; "I may have to return to the Halls of Healing yet but I could not rest without knowing where our war stood."

"I may not be a queen yet, but regard this as an order." Arwen said firmly; "Return to the Halls of Healing now, and leave only once you are truly strong enough."

"Indeed, the sentiment is admirable, but I believe you ought to take the Lady Arwen's order." another voice rang out.

They spun around to see Ceridwin forming from grey smoke in the centre of the entrance, causing the door wardens to start. She looked mildly annoyed to see Harry up and about, but all could see the relief on her face as he bowed to the king, nodded to the others and began to walk towards her. But even as he reached Ceridwin, his strength failed him and he barely remained standing as she caught him around the waist, half-carrying him to their horses.

* * *

A few days later, Harry had managed to eat and drink enough that his magic began to replenish itself, and though he wasn't fully healed, he had begun to regain his strength and mobility, slowly recovering from the terrible wounds inflicted upon him. He and Ceridwin were quietly brushing their horses in the stables when a powerful horn sang out over the Pelennor Fields and the city of Minas Tirith.

"You know, we no longer need to wear mail, plate and hide." Harry commented to Ceridwin as they both reached for mail hauberks that lay across a wooden beam in the stables.

She frowned for a moment before breaking out into a smile. With a single gesture, the armour was bundled into a chest and two dark-blue surcoats came flying from their quarters. As imposing as ever, the black they usually wore was somewhat lightened to a midnight blue, with baggy trousers and a pair of dragon hide boots each, their only concession to the past were their favoured black cloaks.

Before climbing into the saddle, Ceridwin pulled him into a kiss, once again assuring herself that he lived.

* * *

They had ridden out onto the streets just as Faramir, carrying the banner of Gondor with Eowyn riding alongside with Rohan's horse banner, led Aragorn with Arwen, followed by Gandalf came down the streets. Wheeling around, they rode alongside the horses of the future King and his future Queen.

"That's Theoden's horn." called Faramir.

"You go with us to greet them?" asked Aragorn.

"I would not miss it for the world if the two figures I spotted riding with Rohan's warriors are who I think." Harry replied.

Nodding to Ceridwin, they broke away from the group, tapping their heels into Winter and Moonlight's flanks. The two horses galloped down through the levels, racing down past the Gondorian soldiers who stood at every corner, sentinels bearing the scars of the hard-fought-for peace. At every corner, people came to cheer for them as he raced past them, a sight which made both smile slightly, that despite hundreds of years of constant fighting against the encroaching darkness of Mordor, that they still held life in them.

They continued the ride, circling down through the levels of the city to the gates which were flung open as the two jet black chargers' hoofbeats echoed against the cobblestones, becoming soft thuds as they rode out onto the grass of the Pelennor Fields, riding out to meet the army.

Racing across the fields, Harry, with Ceridwin beside him, easily crossed several miles to the massed cavalcade of horsemen. Circling in, he fell into a canter beside Theoden, his face breaking into a smile as he saw, each riding with a Rohirrim lancer, the two missing Hobbits, Frodo and Sam.

"Their ordeal was long and tiring, but we found them when the rocks of Doom cooled." Theoden called above the thunderous hoof-beats of several eoreds of cavalry; "I hope the warmth of the welcome of Minas Tirith has improved since Denethor's reign as his company was less than friendly.."

"Weary of the saddle already Theoden?" asked Harry; "You must be getting aged!"

"I would taunt you for being a young man were I not aware you are older than I." chuckled the king, gesturing for his bodyguard to speed up as they crossed the fields toward the specks that they identified as the Gondorian Royal Party. "Few are the years that you seem to have, yet many are they in experience."

Peace was upon them, yet it would not last long as pirates from Umbar sailed to wreak vengeance on the free countries of Middle Earth as they recovered from the war on Mordor. Harry, by then strong enough, led an army of two-hundred archers and his own soldiery to confront them.

* * *

Hoof-beats rang out around the Citadel Courtyard as two black chargers burst through the gates, their host of five-hundred men halting on the lower level. Striding into the Tower Hall, Harry and Ceridwin were somewhat bemused to see Gandalf talking to a man who could have been his brother, along with Faramir and Eowyn who were sat at a table talking with Aragorn and Arwen while a severe-looking woman and a dour looking man stood near the doors. Ceridwin's eyes narrowed at the last man, recognising him but having never had a moment to speak to him. She turned, looking at the elder before raising an eyebrow.

"I was unaware Gandalf had a brother." Ceridwin stated in Sindarin, the elf-tongue, to which Aragorn chuckled and Arwen smirked.

"Indeed." Harry rolled his eyes; "We encountered the corsair fleet on the coast. They had Haradrim archers on board to supplement their own."

"Oh, I thought the Haradrim had been dealt with." Aragorn frowned as he stood up and strode over, briefly embracing both Harry and Ceridwin.

"We set one ship, full of bodies, back to the lands occupied by the Umbars and one to the Haradrim as an example having killed all the on board and burnt every other enemy vessel there." Harry replied; "They were on the outbound so no cargo or slaves were aboard."

"I assumed you'd been burning something." interjected Faramir with a lazy smirk; "There's ash remnants and bleaching on your skin."

Harry simply waved his hand, cleaning the traces of ash from both his and Ceridwin's skin, though there was still slight bleaching from it.

"We intend to take a company of cavalry to Cirith Ungol, see what is to be done with the tower there and make sure that Shelob is dead, maybe collapse the tunnels." Ceridwin stated.

"Do we know yet why Sauron could take physical form? I was of the belief that until reunited with the ring that he could be no more than a fire-wraith." asked Faramir.

"Aye, I believe that because of its proximity to Mount Doom and Barad-dur that it allowed Sauron to temporarily take form. With our slightly infamous reputation, I expect he decided we were the biggest threat to his power, so with Ceridwin less than a mile away, he decided to try and remove us both." Harry replied, wincing at the phantom pain from the numerous broken bones he gained in the fight.

"However, what is to be done with these corsairs and the Haradrim?" asked Arwen.

"Personally, I'd colonise Tolfalas in the Bay of Belfalas, set up a fortress with long-range weaponry, catapults and ballistae... Send for the elven shipwrights and commission them to build ships capable of carrying a war party, archers, infantry to attack and board enemy ships, ballistae on the sides, bow and stern to sink them." said Harry; "But that would take months if not years to set up... The knights of Dol Amroth should be patrolling the coast, if we could pressure the other, neutral tribes of the Haradrim into pushing at Umbar's borders."

"Gather the nine warlords of the west, Aragorn, Theoden, Kings of Gondor and Rohan, Faramir, Prince of Ithilien, Eomer, Lord of the Mark, Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, Harry as the Black Sorcerer and Protector of the Free, Gandalf for the Istari, Gimli, Lord of the Glittering Caves and Legolas, Prince of Mirkwood." said Ceridwin; "No nation would stand in defiance of the powers that felled Sauron massed together. If the nine warlords were gathered when Harad sends its ambassadors."

"Rebuild Osgiliath." suggested Gandalf, his voice ringing clear around the Tower Hall; "A fortress so close to the city on the Anduin, giving us a port where we can load and unload men and supplies. At the moment it is no more than a depressing ruin and a weakness. A weakness we cannot afford! Gondor lies at the end of a seemingly endless war, do not make us seem so ruined that every other nation on this Middle Earth feels it can destroy us."

"We're but months past the end of a swift and bloody war, consolidate our hold, and present a front that none would defy." Harry nodded; "And if that doesn't work, leading a few war-bands south and subduing the Haradrim tribe by tribe might. It's not something I'd like, but it's always a possibility."

"Last resort of course." Aragorn stated; "I don't want the Fourth Age to open in a wave of blood and conflict."

"Peace can only come at a price, often that of conflict." Arwen counselled.

"Indeed. However, I must beg you that we take our leave." said Ceridwin; "We have ridden long and hard, through dust and sand, night and day."

Aragorn rose and bowed to them, his fist clenched over his heart, 'allowing' them to leave his presence. Bowing back, the two burst into black clouds and streaked out of the Throne Room, completely passing through the doors.

"Forgive me sire, I know he has led our armies time and time again to victory, yet why do you allow him to dictate so much to you?" asked a genuinely curious Faramir.

"I trust Harry with my life, as I do Ceridwin." replied Aragorn; "But he is a far older, far more powerful man than many realise, half of what we know of him is myth, half is legend."

"The Black Knight is first recorded as coming forth before the Host of Valinor, a great warrior, fighting Morgoth's forces at the Dagor Bragollach, saving thousands to fight again when the Valar advanced upon those lands. When they came, he again took up arms and fought in the great battles of that time, and though it was long before I arrived in Middle Earth, those that saw him in battle tell of the most terrible wrath with which he cast down his enemies." said Gandalf, his strong voice echoing around the hall; "It is said that in his wrath, he smote the lands of Morgoth into the sea. Whether it is true or not, who can say? So few remain from that time and none speak of it. The Lady Ceridwin implied to me that his wrath is tempered by her presence and that is why we still have a Middle Earth that has not been blasted into the sea."

"What is known Lord Steward, is that on the plains of Dagorlad, he led a contingent against Sauron's armies, and fought at the Siege of Barad-dur and witnessed Sauron's first fall." interjected Arwen in her musical tone; "But in elven lore, there is much about someone similar in description to him, and if even what I've been told of this last war is true, I pray I never attract his wrath. Thousands of years of history he has seen and participated in, I would not pitch a thousand elvish warriors against him for every year he has lived and hope to win."

"I doubt that you will my lady, he is greatly fond of you and I heard him once call Aragorn a 'misbegotten twit who's too much of an utter imbecile to realise that love is stood in front of him waving her hand in his face and yet he still doubts'." Gandalf said, smirking, a very unusual expression on the Istar's face.

"I was having a bad day." Aragorn huffed as Arwen raised an eyebrow; "He pulled me out of my depression rather brutally before stomping said depression into the ground until it was nought but a smear in my memories."

"Harry has a tendency to have the subtlety of a battery of trebuchet when not tempered by his wife." chuckled the Istar; "My apologies Master Dumbledore, Master Snape, Lady McGonagall, I was intending on asking them to speak to you, but as you see they come and go as they want."

"You need not apologise my lord." stated Dumbledore, in a bit of shock at what he'd heard.

* * *

Harry stepped over a cut aimed at his legs and lunged towards Ceridwin, who batted aside his sword with a point-down parry, bringing her own sword around to cut at him from shoulder to hip. Harry simply stepped back and responded with a two-handed cut towards her head which his opponent blocked by the simple expedient of grabbing his wrist with her left hand and slashing her blade at his stomach.

Using his empty left hand, Harry drew a dagger and redirected her cut away from him while he pulled his wrist away from her grip. He suddenly reversed direction, pushing downward with his wrist as Ceridwin tried to pull his hand down, managing to wrench his sword-arm free.

She swung around, landing a powerful strike with her elbow in his stomach and cut downward from above her right shoulder with both hands, holding her sword vertically. Harry, winded, barely fended off her strike, the fight ending as he felt the point of a dagger pressed against his stomach as he held her sword off above his left shoulder with his own.

"I yield." Harry said, releasing his sword, having sheathed his dagger. It clattered onto the stones, and Ceridwin, smirking, sheathed her own weapons. That was when he grabbed her, throwing them both over, laughing.

They sprang up upon hearing gentle clapping on the terrace set a few steps above the lawn on which they'd been duelling. The two bearded men, Gandalf and the one they did not know, were stood watching them.

"An excellent display." commented Gandalf.

"Thank-you Olorin." said Ceridwin.

"Let us walk." Gandalf instructed, the other man silently following. "What do you wish to do now that Sauron is vanquished, his armies ruined and his fortresses slighted?"

Harry and Ceridwin exchanged glanced before the latter replied;

"We have spoken about it, we considered returning to the Undying Lands, yet it has been nigh seven-thousand turns of the sun around this Middle Earth that we have lived here, at least for me, longer for Harry. Walking amongst men, dwarves, elves and creatures of ill. At the same time, oft we have fought here, but few have been the places to call home. Living amidst the grandeur of Gondor, the warm simpleness of the halls of the Horse Lords of Rohan, the extravagant caves of the dwarves, the quiet, beautiful calm of the elven lands, even amidst the eagles, yet few could we call home. And amongst the Valar, there are one or two for whom we hold no love." Ceridwin said sadly.

"Soon is the day we leave these shores Olorin, it is not a fact I can state, yet it is one I am certain of, from my bones and my heart I feel it." replied Harry; "An era comes to a close, it is time for mankind to live as it should, a flawed but great peoples, to rule and be ruled. The days where elves and deities are their guides and rulers shall be gone ere long. Tell me you do not feel it Olorin and I should wonder if your appearance as an old man effects your mind."

"And yours the impudence of youth belying the age and wisdom with which it comes." Gandalf replied.

"Indeed. I find it freeing as with age comes the expectation of responsibility and diplomacy, at neither do I excel." chuckled Harry; "Thus I have never changed my form. Though, my old friend, I doubt you have come to pester us for acting the age we pretend to be."

"No, I come on behalf of my new acquaintance." said Gandalf, gesturing to the as-yet silent man; "This is Albus Dumbledore, and he came to me some time ago bearing a fanciful tale of crossing universes, and your past, such fancy that I believe it, as no lie could truly be quite as extravagant."

"I have little doubt that he speaks anything but the truth." Harry allowed; "Few are those who know anything of me, and fewer know anything beyond what is embedded in myth and legend, even you Olorin. Those few are a handful of the Eldar, Ceridwin and a few amongst the Valar. We must remember that oft, it is the more fanciful a tale which bears the greater truth, for have we not heard tales which encourage disbelief, yet are found to be true? Did not Saruman dismiss the rise of the accursed Sauron as fanciful tales and paranoia?"

"A true liar rarely likes extravagance for detail is difficult to create in the mind. Master Dumbledore tells me that he has a method to return you to the world from whence you came, though he informs me there are those who are ill-disposed toward you." nodded Gandalf.

"Take care, do not decide in haste." added Ceridwin; "For even the wisest amongst men, elves and the ranks of the Maiar and Valar cannot see all ends."

Harry affectionately wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"Should I make an ill-choice, I may rely on the certainty of you making my mistake known to me." he replied; "But take heed, there are those few who I would not leave behind."

"Excuse us, late is the hour and we would discuss your offer." said Ceridwin and the two bowed before striding away, Harry still with an arm wrapped around her.

* * *

Reaching for her forehead, Harry gently brushed Ceridwin's hair from where it was pasted to her skin by the sweat of their union, gazing on his wife. For moments, she had taken on a most beautiful and terrible form before returning to her form alike to a mortal. A woman of pure fire.

Fifteen-hundred years into the Age of the Trees, when Melkor had sought dominion over all of Middle Earth, having destroyed the two trees of Valinor, the sun and the moon had been brought to their stations by two of the Maiar, the male Tilion and the female Arien.

For a whole age, Tilion and Arien had carried the moon and the sun to their stations before the deep magic of Arda took hold and released them from their duties as Eru Illuvitar awoke his creations on Middle Earth. The sun-bearer, Arien, was of a form which the eyes of the Eldar and Men, could not be seen without descending into insanity or being struck dumb. Only a lover could see her true form without suffering thus. Only Harry could see her true form.

"_Meldanya _Ceridwin Arien Potter." he whispered, stroking her hair.

"I love you too." replied Ceridwin, curling into his side, nearly purring with contentment.

"What do you think of the offer tall-and-bearded gave us?" asked Harry eventually.

"Maybe it truly is time to move on. The Valar have all but forgotten Middle Earth, it is time for man to take care of his own lands, we are no longer needed." she replied.

* * *

"Severus, what are you doing?" asked Dumbledore, exiting the bedroom he used to find the living room of their quarters stacked with books and parchment covered in the Potions Master's scribbles.

"Albus, we are guests of an immensely powerful group of people, magically and politically. Do you not think I would not try and learn as much as I can to avoid offending one of the many residents of this city who carry swords? Do you even stop to think about this or do you just charge headlong into a situation?" Snape said acidly, raking around for a map he'd found.

"Well, what have you found dear boy?" asked Dumbledore, getting a hateful glare from Snape.

"For instance the land we are in now is Gondor, right on the eastern end of the Ered Nimrais, the White Mountains. This country follows the line of these mountains along the north, going right down to the sea in the west and the south, while it extends east to the Ephel Duath, the Mountains of Shadow which ring Mordor along with Ered Lithui, the Ash Mountains down to the River Poros which borders the deserts of Harad. The language they speak is Westron and is fairly similar to Middle English." Snape rattled off; "North of the Ered Nimrais is the land of Calenardhon, known as Rohan as it is occupied by the Rohirrim whose cavalry we have seen fighting with the Gondorians, who speak both their Westron and their own language, Rohirric which is broadly comparable to Anglo-Saxon."

"And what have you learnt beyond geography, what about the people? Their titles, what they mean." asked Minerva McGonagall, entering from outside.

"Aha, now we're living as guests of Aragorn II Elessar, he is the second of his line of descent with the name Aragorn, as for Elessar, I'm not sure. As we witnessed, he married to the elven princess Arwen and bears the title King of Gondor and Arnor, the latter of which is an abandoned realm of great size to the northwest of Rohan. To the south west of it is the unclaimed Eriador, a wilderness occupied by the elves and wild men alone." Snape continued; "Returning to titles, Gandalf, Mithrandir, Olorin, all names I have heard used to address the White Wizard, I cannot say why he has those, but only guess that they are from different cultures. He is the leader of the wizards of these land, the Istari, who are four in number, once five, each given colours. We witnessed the downfall of the previous White Wizard, Saruman. The others are Radagast, Allatar and Pallando, yet despite their displays of magic, the two Potters are not of these Istari."

"Severus, I worry that you're beginning to even speak like these people." stated Dumbledore, earning two glares telling him to shut up.

"As I was saying, the Istar are four in number. Then we have the elven communities who prefer to stay within themselves, though we have seen some of the most powerful. Galadriel, Lady of the forest of Lothlorien and de-facto ruler of the elves alongside her husband Celeborn though neither uses a royal title. The others are only mentioned as places such as Mirkwood." noted Snape, putting down the map and rifling through his notes; "Rohan is ruled by Theoden son of Thengel, lord of a nation of plainsmen who rear the finest horses and are noted as 'Fierce Horse Lords' for their skill. To our northwest beyond Mordor is Rhovanion, not ruled by any one being but there are several communities, Dale, a human city ruled by Brand of Dale, and beyond it is the mountain realm of Erebor, a dwarven fortress ruled by Dain II Ironfoot."

He paused, grabbing a flask of wine from the table and pouring a good portion into a goblet before taking a sip.

"If I am right, for every year in our world Dumbledore, and it has been seven years, approximately a thousand pass here if Potter has truly been here for seven-thousand years. Thus for every day we remain here, a thousandth of a day passes in our world, so we have little in the way of a deadline, so I study." stated Snape, sitting down on a high-backed chair; "I am in a land full of the wise, of great scholars. Do not expect me to linger here without making use of this... resource. Once I was seduced by knowledge without wisdom. Now I seek wisdom so that I may understand and use knowledge."

"Indeed, you may be right. We are, after all, amongst fascinating peoples, who are, many of them, highly skilled and knowledgeable in their chosen fields." Dumbledore admitted. "The magic in the air here is so thick that it is almost stifling, and any being, magical or not, with sufficient learning and mental control can wield it."

"It is expected of every noble to carry a sword, and every scholar to carry something like a dagger." Snape added; "And while the steel forged in this city is of good quality, the craftsmen from whom the greatest among the nobles get their weapons are the elves and the dwarves who have quite unique but great skill with crafting of weapons."

"We ought to acquire such then." said McGonagall.

They were interrupted by a sharp knocking on the door.

"Enter!" barked Snape.

The door opened to admit a Gondorian soldier in the plate armour typical of the city guard.

"Masters Dumbledore and Snape, Lady McGonagall, my Lord Gandalf asks that you join him to break your fasts." said the guard, unfazed by the chaos of parchments strewn around the room.

"Indeed. If you would escort us to wherever he dines..." Dumbledore requested.

* * *

Harry finished dicing an apple with a razor-sharp dagger, barely paying attention as he and Ceridwin, sat silent, half-listening to the discussion held between the three wizards and the Istar, and half silently conversing through facial expressions.

"We'll do it." she suddenly announced.

"Sorry?" said Dumbledore, confused by the sudden comment.

"Though we have things we must do before leaving this world, we will go to yours." Harry stated.

"Wonderful! I would say we had no time to loose, but it seems we have plenty." beamed Dumbledore.

* * *

_Sorry it has taken this long to update, but this is a whopper that I've rewritten completely three times. It is my first attempt at a LOTR story, so CONSTRUCTIVE criticism is welcome. If you see any grammer, spelling or punctuation missed in this, please tell me._

_Yours, ElMarquis_


	34. AUTHOR'S NOTE ALERT

__Just a brief note to allow people to get an idea on what I'm up to. Right now I have several projects on the boil and others going cold.__

__A Soldier's Tale is currently being amalgamated with Pilot's Tale multi-shot short stories to make Harry Potter: Soldier and Airman which I have started posting. The Warrior is part of the evolution of A Soldier's Tale but in itself, is dead.__

__Harry Callahan, son of the Inspector is dead pretty much, I have tried doing a rewrite, but it's going to be slow.__

__Never Tickle a Sleeping Potter is a bit dead, I have more chapters of it on my computer but it needs an overhaul. I barely know anything about CSI so I might take Harry and implant him as a teenager into NCIS or something like that.__

__Making a Fool of Time will be worked on, it's just my muse is currently full of kerosene and cordite, not broadswords and magic. The Dragon Mage is in need of a major rewrite which is subject to the same limitations as Making a Fool of Time.__

__I will continue adding to Mini-Fics, and my spellbook may gain a few bits every so often.__

__The Powerful Protectors is dead. It was my first attempt at fiction. It. Was. Stereotypical. Turd.__

__The Templar, Death Shaken not Stirred is finished though I may rewrite it as I mature. __


	35. Battle of Godric's Hollow The Last Stand

**October 31st 1976, Godric's Hollow, Great Britain**

James Potter worked on clearing up the chaos of two boys playing in the sitting room of his beloved summer cottage in the village of Godric's Hollow. He pulled out a drawer from the sofa, carefully placing all the toys in rows one one side of a wooden separator and the various bits of bedding that were lying around for the twins' nap on the other side. He was just sliding it closed when Lily reappeared around the bottom of the staircase.

"The boys all right?" James asked, standing up and meeting the redheaded goddess that he saw his wife as halfway across the room.

"They went out like lights." Lily replied, smiling.

James pulled her close to him, planting kisses along her neck. The twins, Adrian and Hadrian could be a bit of a handful sometimes. He drew his wand from the back of his waistband, keeping one arm around Lily's waist, embracing his gorgeous wife as he summoned a pair of wine glasses and a bottle from the direction of the kitchen. Catching them with a levitation charm, he lowered them to a small table and chucked his wand over his shoulder in the general direction of the sofa.

"A drink my fair lady?" he asked gallantly, already releasing Lily to pour them a glass of wine each.

An hour later, the bottle was empty and Lily was curled up on James's lap, her head resting on his shoulder, eyes half-closed. In an uncertain time with only each-other and their children to keep them grounded the simplest intimacy staved off the melancholy and stress. Unfortunately, it was not to last.

The Wizarding Area Resistance Defences, commonly known in shorthand as wards flared their connection to the binder, in this case James himself. Instantly alert, he woke Lily.

"Quickly, the plan, take the boys and run, run for Caereyr!" James whispered harshly as her emerald green eyes snapped open; "I will follow. The wards have just flared, someone unknown is inside the Fidelius."

"Peter!" Lily hissed drawing her wand; "If he's betrayed us, I'll either butcher the person who got the secret out of us or gut him!"

James ignored her, dashing over to the window and crouching, giving himself the most amount of defence from the bricks of the wall. His eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, spotting three figures, robed and masked stood on either side of another taller one wearing a far more ornate mask than any other. James leapt up, grabbing Lily.

"TAKE THE BOYS AND GO!" yelled James, nearly throwing her towards the stairs; "IT'S HIM! Go, run, I'll hold him off."

Terrified, Lily dashed for the stairs as the door imploded. The first Death Eater through the door was dead before he realised what happened. James swept up the two Waterford crystal wineglasses and slung them, one after another into the face-mask of the approaching Death Eater as he came through the door. The lead crystal shattered spectacularly, causing the Death Eater to claw at his eyes as minute particles of glass tore into them.

James dived to the floor in front of the screaming attacker, snatching up the fallen wand. He snarled a curse, punching a fist-sized hole through the stomach of his enemy with a jagged icicle. For a moment the wound was sealed by the icicle, filling it and freezing the flesh, but the lone defender was already moving.

A twirl of the stolen wand transformed the ice into acid. James was fully aware that the chances of him surviving this encounter were low, but the psychological damage he could inflict before falling were high. Summoning his own wand to him, he revelled in the fresh, warm feeling coming from the wood, welcoming his magic instead of the insidious oily feeling of the stolen one.

As a second Death Eater charged him, wand spewing curses, James threw the stolen wand into the air and hit it with his most potent banishing charm combined with an overpowered unbreakable charm, driving it up to the grip in the upper chest of his attacker. Smacking away a curse, he hit the impaling wand with an enlargement charm, watching in gruesome, morbid amusement as the man's shoulders were forced aside and his neck torn away from them.

The next attacker to come through the door was more skilled, wearing a bracer on his left forearm conjuring shields left, right and centre as he strategically placed curses to herd James into a kill-zone from which he'd be hard-pressed to escape. The man loosed a killing curse to put down the sofa just as its immense claws were about to maul him, replying with a volley of piercing curses of little power but sufficient strength to force James to dodge and shield.

James, snarling as he was suddenly up against the fireplace blocked five fast-bludgeoning hexes before his head hit the mantelpiece. Then he realised something that his father had given him, a relic of flying Hawker Tempest fighters in the Middle East, an elegant, curved blade, a scimitar.

Ducking under another curse, he summoned one of the armchairs, transfiguring it into a mutated monster of some unidentifiable sort that only a mind twisted by hopeless courage could come up with. As the monstrous collection of limbs fell upon the Death Eater, he'd drawn the scimitar, begging the blade to be sharp as another Death Eater ducked through the low doorway, firing curses his way. James sliced the legs out from under him and fired a point-blank blasting curse into his head, painting the wall red as the Death Eater wrestling with the chair finally threw it aside with a similar blasting curse and began to climb to his feet.

It was too late. By that time the tip of Charlus Potter's scimitar drew a long cut across the Death Eater's chest and then sank the length of the blade into his heart with a single, vicious lunge.

"James Potter... Dear Jamessssss..." hissed a serpentine voice.

"My Lord Voldemort..." James replied, a fanatical grin coming across his face as he knelt next to the fallen Death Eater, left hand resting on the grip of the sword embedded in the dead man; "I prayed you were coming. I really want to kill you."

He leapt forward, the sword, held upside-down in his hand coming around in a slash aimed at Riddle's midriff. The blade bit nothing but silk as the dark lord swung backwards, his elegant robes swirling about him as he blocked a gouging curse aimed at his head from James's wand.

Hissing with anger as the fearless father lunged at him with the sword, a ribbon-cutting curse cleaving into the door frame and walls, brushed off the shield of the man stood in the doorway. Voldemort released the shield and aimed a bone shattering curse at the sword, and while not intended for steel, it broke the blade into several pieces.

"I liked that weapon." James growled, delivering an unexpected kick to the back of Voldemort's knee, sending him down on one knee as if genuflecting for a moment.

He summoned the longest shard of the broken sword, transfiguring it into something resembling a dagger, Norse in style with a dragon's head and neck forming the grip and a single-edged, slightly curved blade. James, clutching his wand in his right hand and the dagger on his right, attacked again. Voldemort had never had to defend himself, he was a whirlwind of death and destruction killing all who fled or stood in his path. He had never met a man who would charge him.

James brushed off a cutting curse with a short gesture and slashed downward, unleashing a barrage of cutting curses of all varieties, some diseased curses, some clean, short and deep, long and shallow, his wand described sharp motions in the air as pulse after pulse of magic left it.

The small amount of space he was allowed in the fight was making it easier for him to bring the knife into play. Every time Voldemort went to cast a curse, he was shielding another curse and blocking the knife. At every turn, James's furious aggression was paying off. Suddenly, with a burst of magic, the man, under the cover of a barrage of curses still leaving his wand, morphed into a stag, only needing to toss his head and Voldemort was thrown against the wall under his antlers.

James lowered his head and charged again, but the dark lord rolled out of the way, slicing the antlers to half their length with a cutting curse. A killing curse missed by inches as the stag returned to human form. Rolling out of the way of two further curses, the beleaguered James Potter threw the knife at Riddle, hitting it with a duplication charm and an area banishing charm, so that suddenly a dozen blades flew at the dark lord.

Voldemort blasted them out of the air one-by-one, but even as he did that, James had closed the distance between them. Raising his wand to utter another killing curse, Voldemort found James parrying away the wand with his fist, clenched around the hilt of a knife that he'd caught being blasted away by the dark lord. Then to his shock, the hand with the knife suddenly reversed direction and slammed through the thin, metallic skin of his mask. For the first time in many years, Thomas Riddle felt pain inflicted by another human being.

Triumphantly, having drawn blood from the dark lord himself, James pulled the knife back for another attack, tearing the mask off Voldemort's face, revealing him. The aristocratic features of Tom Riddle were not gone, his eyes red, cheeks sunken and pale, but still that angular arrogance was there, twisted by hate and anger.

He blasted James into a wall and advanced on him, wand levelled.

"Akh-ka-ieb Amenta-khet!"

* * *

Looking back just once at her husband as the door imploded, Lily ran for the twins. She snatched up the Portkey, an enchanted teddy bear and whispered the activation word.

"Eagle's Fortress."

Nothing happened. With the cold experimentation of a scientist, she checked the enchantments on the bear. They were all there and working. Lily then tried to disapparate. Nothing, her spin on the spot only served to nearly send her onto her front. All exit routes were blocked. The children, under the effects of a hastily-cast sleeping spell would not remain unconscious long.

She narrowed her eyes at the cot and then some blankets. Hastily knotting the blanket around the cot with the boys in it, she knotted the other end to the wardrobe and swung open the window. Quickly lowering the cot out, Lily slid down the improvised rope after it, transfiguring a knife as she went. The moment her feet hit the ground, she sliced open the blanket, snatched up the sleeping boys and ran for the ward-line, twenty feet away.

When she felt the wards lift, Lily let out a breath of relief and vanished with a pop. Reappearing in the courtyard of an immense, walled fortress in the depths of Wales, bypassing the magical defences as only the lady of the house could, Lily aimed her wand at a nearby watering trough for horses and unleashed her most powerful blasting curse, obliterating it with a loud orange-coloured bomb sound.

Not more than a minute later, the great doors to the fortress burst open, revealing a man of great stature, maybe not a half-giant but stood over six feet tall and well-built, wearing shin-length chainmail and an over-robe, while held in his hands was a double-headed battleaxe.

"Cedric." Lily breathed

* * *

Cedric the Saxon finished his last evening patrol of the walls of Caereryr Castle, deep in the wild valleys and mountains of Wales, the last of the great Roman forts, around which, several further fortresses had been built, a Norman stone motte-and-bailey, then a huge medieval fortress and finally the artillery bastions of a Tudor fort.

It had been his home for fifteen-hundred years. His prison. He should never have crossed Lucius Artorius Castus, Arthur the Potter. It had been a mistake. Arthur could have claimed his life, but ensorcelled him to the bloodline of his own family. Bound, eternally. A curse, to see the world change before his eyes, bound within the curtain walls, unable to change anything himself. It was worse than an honourable death at the end of a sword. And yet, in years more recent, he had not been detested by the Potters, not an enemy. He had grown rather fond of some of them, no more than James, and his consort, Lillian.

Stepping into his study, he ran his hand down the shaft of a double-bladed battle axe, mounted on an elegant stand he'd carved centuries before in his spare time. It stood next to the aged colours of the Sixth Legion, which leaned against the wall in the corner of the room.

Cedric was physically a huge, bear-like man, with long, dirty-blond hair and a full beard with a few locks plaited, including the ends of his moustache. When doing his duties around the estate, he wore simple leather boots, nearly knee-length, loose cotton breeches and a wine-red tunic, with a seax short sword thrust through his belt.

However, stood on a stand in the shape of a man was a set of padded dragon-leather armour with several chainmail pieces laid over it and a wine-red robe woven with Saxon runes for protection, and a Saxon broadsword lay against the door, not used as anything more than a fire poker for many a year.

Settling back in a chair, he was just reaching for a bottle of mead when a great blast erupted from the courtyard. In moments, he was swathed in a layer of light leather, his chainmail and dragon's hide armour and then a robe over it. Strapping his sword on its belt around his waist, Cedric snatched up his axe and dashed for the staircase down to the entrance hall. Racing down the staircase, he hoisted the bar from across the fortress doors and flung them open.

Cedric stepped out, hoisting his axe in both hands in preparation for a good fight when he stopped, seeing the current Lady Potter, pale as death itself, clutching her sons.

"Cedric." he heard her breathe before straightening up and speaking clearly; "Cedric, take my sons and place them somewhere safe. Then get me a pistol from the armoury, I know Charlus Potter hoarded weapons, get me a couple now!"

"May I ask why my lady?" said Cedric.

"My husband, your lord, faces down Voldemort at this very moment, with the intent to _end _the line you are sworn to protect." she hissed.

Cedric contemplated for a few seconds simply leaving. Without help, James Potter was dead, and with no head of house 'of age', there was nothing stopping him. A thousand years in a magically-saturated environment had lent him some magic of his own, he'd learnt to manipulate it. He could go anywhere in the world... a world he didn't know. He nodded and relieved Lily of the burden of the two children, and despite himself, a small smile broke out as the twins snuggled into his shoulders, one of them clutching at the braids of his hair.

A few minutes later Cedric returned, a pair of semi-automatic pistols with three magazines each in a pair of holsters which he handed to Lily. Shaking loose the mental cobwebs, he test-drew his sword, before hefting the axe in one hand. He smiled. It was a thin, unpleasant smile. Lily, having pushed one pistol into the back of her waistband and the other's holster attached to the outside of her right pocket, clutched Cedric and disapparated.

Appearing just a few yards down the road, Cedric and Lily sprinted towards the cottage, narrowly dodging a Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle as it did what bikes often _didn't _do, descend out of the sky and slam into the road, jarring the suspension. The man on the back peeled off his helmet as Lily looked towards him, revealing shoulder-length brown hair.

"Lils! It's Peter! He's gone!" yelled Sirius.

"Voldemort's in there!" Lily yelled back, throwing a pistol to Sirius, who caught it deftly.

The Death Eaters who had remained outside, just two of the six who had come with their master, ran towards them as they burst through the Fidelius charm.

"LILY, GET JAMES!" Sirius yelled, gunning his motorcycle and hurtling towards one of the Death Eaters, who was pitched over the handlebars and the driver's lowered head. Kicking down the stand, Sirius climbed off.

The Death Eater rose, a sheet of silver hair appearing as his shattered mask fell away from his face. Sirius tensed. His hated cousin-in-law Lucius Malfoy. The man who had, in an arranged marriage, bound the will of one of his favourite relatives. There was none of his typical banter. Black and Malfoy each brought up his respective wand, and as Lucius moved to utter a curse, without hesitation, Sirius shot him thrice, each bullet from the pistol impacting his chest.

"So long, I hope Narcissa doesn't like widowhood because she had a crush on an available friend of mine." Sirius commented, walking over to Cedric, who had batted his opponent into the stone wall around the front garden with the flat of his axe.

"Black, oathsworn son of the Potters." Cedric greeted him.

"Cedric." Sirius replied, holding his wand in a loose grip, ready to loose a vicious cutting curse; "You need me to kill this scum."

"On the contrary." Cedric rasped, using the tip of one of the axeheads to tip the mask off the face of... Peter Pettigrew; "I'm about to kill one of your friends. I think you should watch."

"He betrayed them willingly?" asked Sirius.

"Yes. Led his master right to their door." Cedric replied.

"If it is done, it is best done quickly." Sirius nodded.

Cedric planted Pettigrew's face into the low stone wall with his boot and swung his axe over his shoulder, delivering a single blow to smoothly sever his neck. That was when they heard a scream.

"Akh-ka-ieb Amenta-khet!"

* * *

Like a puppet with its strings cut, Voldemort collapsed next to James, before suddenly, black flames erupted around him. Amenta-khet, fires of the underworld consumed 'ieb', his body, 'akh', his soul and 'ka', the spirit which would pass on to the afterlife, there was nothing left.

James tried to move, but couldn't. Certainly, being blasted into the wall had broken something.

"Hey." he whispered as Lily knelt next to him, wand-tip dancing as she began to heal him.

"Don't move." Lily replied; "The boys are safe. And we are _not_ staying here. If I have to knock you out and drag you there myself, we're moving to the castle."

"I... agree." James coughed as he felt the bones of his right shoulder knitting together.


	36. Mercenary

**August 1995, Camp Springbok on the Rio Cuanza, ten miles west of Muxima, Angola.**

Whining down from a fast run up the river from the sea, the former Danish Navy Soloven-class fast patrol boat gently nosed against the boards of a wooden pier. A man of about forty stepped off the bridge, having shut down the three maritime-modified aviation turbines, as one of the crew threw a rope loop onto a bollard and pulled them in close. Emerging from tents pitched around a rather-beaten looking Boeing 727 airliner, more people congregated around the boat, securing a second rope to the pier and allowing the crew to begin unloading.

The vessel had been out into the Western Atlantic to meet a cargo vessel with supplies aboard and a couple of contacts who did business with them. The captain. Sergei Ivanovich, stepped onto land, the forty-year old ex-_Zaslon _Spetsnaz operative letting the slightest smile out as he was approached by his current commanding officer. Harry Potter. Believed to be born English around 1975, known resident in South Africa since 1978, believed to be an orphan who had been forcefully conscripted into the infamous 32 Battalion in 1987 but had deserted when the unit withdrew from Angola in 1989. When he had been recruited to the ragtag group of mercenaries, Potter had been in East Germany making a fortune out of the demand for ex-Eastern Bloc equipment.

Upon leaving Europe, Ivanovich and a fifteen-year old KGB conscript who had escaped the KGB during the August Putsch accompanying Potter had gained a contract from the United States Department of Defence to mobilise Kurdish forces during Operation Desert Storm. Finally returning to Africa in 1992 with an increased mercenary force, the MPLA government of Angola paying dearly for their services against UNITA after the Communist forces retreated from the country.

"Ten crates of nine-mil, five crates of seven-six-two Russian, ten of seven-six-two NATO and two of twenty-three by one-one-five." Ivanovich reported smartly; "The dealer's representative prove to be... reluctant to accept the agreed payment."

"He was dealt with appropriately?" asked Harry, a deep guttural Afrikaans accent more pronounced by the Cuban cigar he was smoking, one of a great number looted when the Cubans retreated from Angola.

"I believe breathing may prove difficult with a cut throat." said the Russian in the same apathetic monotone, snagging a cigar case from Harry's belt; "And the retirement package is in the hands of your Zurich contact, there will be no issues there."

Harry nodded, snatching back his cigar case after Ivanovich took a cigar out and lit it. The 'retirement package' was the pension for the founding three, himself, the Spetsnaz operative and the ex-KGB recruit, his contemporary, Natasha Romanova. Gold, diamonds and cash, a nice little insurance for when they decided to end their careers.

"Also, you may have heard, the Canadians banned semi-automatics, a contact of mine, I believe the word is 'minion' lifted a great number of rifles and is shipping them to us. I have no intention of paying him, he's coming in person and bodies often turn up in the rivers." Ivanovich stated as they walked through the mercenary camp.

"FN FAL L1A1s?" Harry asked as they approached his tent; "We've already got a couple of hundred stolen during the latter stages of the British disarmament."

"Indeed." was the response as they ducked into the tent where a table sat with a large map laid on it, another mercenary poring over them, a former British Special Air Service man still wearing his much-faded and stained beret.

"Glad to see you're back Russian." grunted the SAS man, Jim Haxham; "I've got a nice bit of trade for a raiding party. There's a UNITA compound up-river about fifteen miles, it's recently established. Our native scouts have identified heavy machine-guns, a couple of captured BTR-40s, Strela launchers, plenty of small arms."

"Put it down as priority." Harry ordered; "If they get launchers within ten miles, we can't operate our transport. How close to the river."

"On the riverbank itself." stated Jim.

"Hit them hard and fast. Take the gunboat up the river, I can barrage mortars into the camp, use the Bofors and the machine-guns to destroy anything in line-of-sight and simultaneously land our troops as a light vehicle force comes from inland." Ivanovich advised; "Send two of the Austrian twin-Bofors M42s with the armed Land Rovers."

"Sounds like a plan." Harry replied, looking over the map which had the compound pencilled in; "Ordnance storage?"

"East side, low building of corrugated iron." Jim said, allowing Harry to outline the location.

"Motor pool?"

"Vehicles are parked up just inside the gates, north-north west."

"Barracks?"

"Tents spread around the entire place."

"Sergei, start quietly mobilizing, it's ten AM, we go in at midnight." came the order; "Jim, get the Land Rovers ready and arm up the natives."

The core of their unit were five mercenaries. Harry, Sergei, Natasha, Jim and an Iraqi Kurd, Berzan who was generally known simply as 'Zan'. The rest of them were hired locals, paid for by the Angolan government to work under the leadership of the mercenaries.

* * *

As ever before a mission, Harry had a certain ritual he went through. It was simply checking every bit of his equipment from his medium-weight body armour to the L1A1 SLR slung at his side. Knives were checked for sharpness, pistols cleaned and loaded, magazines carefully placed in combat rig pockets along with grenades.

Not far away, the four-round clips for the twenty-round magazine on the forty-millimetre Bofors were being loaded aboard the Soloven, followed by belts of NATO 7.62 for the rapid-fire MG3 machine-guns, followed by the payload for the heavy weapons battery on the stern replacing the second Bofors. The heavy weapons included eighty-one millimetre mortars, a pintle-mounted SNEB rocket pod and two MILAN wire-guided missile launchers, requiring a lot of ordnance.

Harry slapped a magazine into his rifle and checked the load on his favourite Colt M1911 before heading out of his tent towards the motor pool to check on the preparations. As he neared he saw the five Land Rovers readied for the assault with their MG3 guns for the front passengers loaded and belts being poured into drums fed up into GSh-6-23 rotary machine-guns looted from old Angolan Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 Fencers mounted on the roll bars of the stripped-down cars.

"Good evening boss." said one of the Angolans, Raul, as he approached.

"Everything ready?" Harry asked.

"We just finish loading the guns and then we mount up and go!" replied Raul.

"Good." Harry stated as another Land Rover roared up, a redhead in similar combat fatigues as he was wearing jumping out.

"All clear, they've been at the kapuka all day, we should be able to overrun them with minimal casualties." she stated, the faintest hint of a Russian accent showing through in her English.

"Thanks Natasha." Harry grinned; "Who're you riding with?"

"I'll join you with the boat crew. More explosions, less risk." Natasha replied with a smirk as the sound of the three Rolls-Royce Tyne Mark 21s, ripped out of a transport plane, starting in the Soloven became audible.

"Good." said Harry, glancing at the sky.

Being close to the equator, sunset was about six o'clock. By midnight, which it was approaching, it was pitch-black. Six hours from sunset, six hours until sunrise. Within minutes they were on the Soloven, with the radio systems being tested. Then the order came from Harry to mobilize.

Ivanovich took the boat downstream, the three turbines cruising towards the sea. Then turning around in the estuary, he pointed it up-stream, with the multitude of weapons crewed mainly by locals. The three engines whined up to full power, thrusting the boat forward with each six-thousand horsepower Tyne engine howling.

"Ready?" Harry asked, leaning against the forward port MILAN launcher, looking at Natasha, who had tied a dark-green shemagh around her head to conceal flame-red hair.

"You bet." she laughed, checking a final time the load and the scope on her Dragunov SVD as the Soloven raced down the river.

"One minute." said Harry, checking visually their location against the map he had tucked through his belt.

"You know we could have used the Zodiacs and the suppressed Vintorez rifles and got in without anyone realising?" Natasha asked as she mentally began counting down. They were skimming the water into the depths of Cuanza Norte, insurgent central at a good sixty miles an hour, the former Spetsnaz operative masterfully balancing the racing vessel around the bends in the river.

Pulling his night-vision goggles down over his eyes, Harry readied himself, knelt on the deck, tensed against the missile launcher and the deck rail with his rifle against his shoulder, muzzle down and safety catch on. Dead on time the river widened out into a small basin, with, on the north side, a ragtag group of small fishing vessels and a jetty with evidence of the insurgent compound beyond.

"Crew, targets eleven o'clock, fire at will!" shouted the commander of the Bofors mount.

The Bofors gun quickly traversed left and down, barking three times in rapid succession. Quickly more clips were loaded as it blazed away in short bursts, obliterating the small boats. The twin MG3 machine-gun mount on the ship's open bridge opened up, chewing through over forty rounds a second between them, hosing down the jetty and boathouse with a steady stream of bullets.

One of the Angolan crew opened up with a revolver grenade launcher, pumping two high-explosive shells in quick succession into the boathouse which erupted into a shower of wood debris. The Soloven nosed past the jetty with inches to spare, allowing Harry and Natasha to throw themselves off the boat, hitting the jetty, tumbling into rolls. Harry, from a half-crouched position opened fire first as insurgents started flocking towards them. His L1A1 fired twice straight into a target as he dashed towards them. The dead fighter fell, as if in slow motion, into the water with a terrific splash.

Pitching a grenade into the throng of half-asleep insurgents, Harry dropped behind the cover of a small hillock, Natasha diving in next to him, slamming home a fresh magazine into her SVD. The Soloven came around again, delivering devastating fire from the Bofors and the bridge-mounted machine-guns. Then the mortars mounted on the stern began to cough, immense bursts of flames erupting from the earth of the camp as the mortar shells began to land. This time with far less speed, the Soloven brushed past the jetty allowing the Angolan force to jump from the ship.

Immediately the exchange of fire began. The compound was built right up to the shoreline, and now the AK-47s and L1A1s of the Angolan natives began to tell with a barrage of bullets. A pair of forty-millimetre shells blasted into the pack of insurgents, the shock-and-awe factor causing a momentary halt which Harry took as an opportunity to dive out of cover, running forward to close the distance.

Abandoning his rifle with the magazine empty, Harry snatched his Czechoslovakian Skorpion machine-pistol from his belt, snapping a magazine into it and opening fire. In moments it was over. The magazine empty, his ka-bar embedded in the chest of one of the insurgents while the others died around him, picked off by Natasha's precision shooting and the barrage from the Angolans.

"Move up!" Harry barked.

Blasts from mortars were still landing all around, the encampment was mostly obliterated as the vehicle-borne force secured the motor pool and the arms stockpile. A BM-21 Grad rocket truck was parked on the far side of the camp from the rest of the UNITA vehicles, along with a communications array. Breaking out from a gully, several insurgents ran towards the truck, separating to avoid the inevitable barrage of bullets.

Dodging the blast from a mortar shell, the first pair were caught as a Land Rover-mounted GSh-6-23 burbled for a moment, chewing up the ground and walking right across a tent and tearing apart the two insurgents. The end of the other pair was equally gruesome as one of the two ex-Austrian M42 Dusters got a bead on them and churned over half-a-dozen shells into them.

The last gunfire was silenced, and slowly the terrible quiet of a finished battle descended. The Angolans advanced forward, kicking over corpses, checking for any sign of life and looting weapons. Harry sighed, picking up his rifle and slinging it around his back. Battles were either day after day of skirmishing with no true engagement, or like this, a blitzkrieg attack over in five minutes.

"Why do they fight." Natasha commented; "Barely any of these insurgents even know what the cause of their masters is."

"Fear an army of sheep led by a lion." Harry shrugged, stepping over the grim remains of the insurgents caught by the M42 Duster's twin cannon; "Our contract here is to push the insurgents back from Cambambe and retake the hydroelectric plant, which would give us access to the old Alto Dondo airstrip. We've been resting, recuperating and rearming from the last offensive, it's time to start pushing back."

"We need to clear up here, bury the bodies and make camp. Assess what we've captured, move up our weapons from base camp and prepare for further offensives." Natasha stated, rolling a body into one of the gullies running across the compound with a firm kick; "The boat will be of use right up to the dam at Cambambe and we can keep up a fast advance with the motor vehicles, but the streets of the towns will need clearing, house-by-house."

"Yes, luckily I think I can force more militia out of the government for us to send in." said Harry; "Only time will tell how the campaign goes."

* * *

_Ex-Arpatheid era bush soldier turned mercenary? Hell yes. If you can't tell I've got a certain fondness for Natasha Romanova, and as in Marvel canon she turned to lone-wolf contract work, that joining a mercenary group wasn't out of the question. One-shot for the moment, sort-of connected to the previous minific, I was thinking that J &amp; L would survive, but Harry go missing a while later, ending up in South Africa._


	37. Heritage V2 Parody of I AM MERLIN'S BRAT

_Think your 'Harry is Merlin's spawn, Arthur's brother and God Almighty's personal butler' stories are good? Try my 'Abbreviated History of How Harry Potter is the Descendent of Arthur, Charlemagne, William the Conquerer, Sweyn Forkbeard, Some Random Doge of Venice, Some Random Flemish Count, the Earl of Oxford, Tsar Nicholas and therefore probably Ivan the Terrible... I haven't researched it... Let me know if I forget anyone..._

The line of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Potter started with a Roman cavalryman, Lucius Artorius Castus, Arthur the Potter, named for his skill moulding the clay of the land into art. Once Legatus Legionis of the Sixth Legion, he had remained in Britain after the exit of Roman forces from the country, fighting against incursions by the Angles, the Saxes and the Jutes. Marrying the daughter of a Briton Clan Chieftain, his line continued until the Angles and the Saxes joined forces as the Anglo-Saxons.

The Saxon kings relied greatly on House of Potter for military power, with them serving most often as Huscarls to the King, until Aethelred Unræd 'the Unready' sat on the throne. Mistrusted by many nobles who stood alongside the Potters, he was swiftly deposed from the crown in 1014 and replaced by the Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard.

Wulfric Potter was head of the family and a minor earl at the time, though with a large number of allies due to his descent from Aelfwynn of Mercia, last Queen of Mercia and his grandmother. Having effectively brought Sweyn Forkbeard to the throne, he arranged the marriage of his son Dunstan, who was yet to reach his teens, to the similarly aged Kaja, the youngest, near-forgotten daughter of Sweyn Forkbeard and his wife, the Princess Gunhild of Wenden. Though her name was to be lost to the mists of history, it was around this time that the family came to true power. Allied with Sweyn for the length of short reign, Wulfric's betrothal of his son and the princess brought great lands and a significant dowry to see to the good keeping of the Princess Kaja.

However, when Sweyn died within five weeks of taking the throne, Wulfric Potter arranged, in return for great swathes of land and monetary gifts, to restore Aethelred, returning him from exile in Normandy. Despite the mutual mistrust, the reinstitution of the House of Wessex was in Wulfric's favour as he organised a pact between the king and the allied noblemen of mutual loyalty, a mere five weeks were needed to take the Potters from an ancient family of old to the height of political and military power.

Then, in 1016, Aethelred died and his son was swiftly fought into submission by Sweyn's son Cnut, who regarded the Potters as great allies, who had failed to assist Edmund Ironside in battle, preferring to side with the Danes. Then, in 1041, with Dunstan Potter and his wife Kaja as heads of the family, Harthacnut, King of England took ill with no heir to the throne apparant.

At the instigation of Dunstan Potter, now Earl of Ravenscroft, Harthacnut met on neutral land with Edward of Wessex, a Saxon noble in exile who had the highest claim to the throne. Taking place before the Potters and all the Thegns of England, Harthacnut adopted Edward as his brother and heir. So when Harthacnut died less than a year later, the Potters were favoured in his will, and gained the royal favour of Edward, who enjoyed the power granted to him by the force raised by the Potter family to defend their immense lands. With raiders coming from Wales and Scotland, the Potter family rebuilt old Roman forts and encircled them with defences learnt from the French, in stone rather than the wood favoured in England.

The titles of Earl of Caereryr, 'Eagle's Fort', their Welsh outpost in the Cambrian Mountains and Earl of Mindrum, their fortress next to the Kielder Forest, on the Scottish Border were swiftly granted as the raids began to decrease with increased border patrols. A watchful peace followed for over twenty years with the borders becoming the sites of frequent skirmishes, but the throne for once was kept by the same man for any length of time.

Edward of Wessex married Edith, the daughter of Godwin, Earl of Wessex and then upped and died in 1066. In London, Harold Godwinson, Edward's brother-in-law proclaimed himself king, Dunstan stormed out of the court in disgust, making for Normandy to deliver the news, as he knew of the oath sworn on the magic of the land and on Holy Relics by Harold to William of Normandy, and of the consequences of breaking it.

Dunstan's eldest son, Philip, joined him in Normandy, and Dunstan's daughter, Ella, married a Norman nobleman of lesser standing, becoming subjugated to the House of Potter due to their primacy. However, it gave them continental lands and an 'in' with the Duke of Normandy, William, who upon learning of the extent of the power of his new ally, offered a betrothal of a member of his family from the moment he was sat on the English throne.

At Hastings, it was Philip Potter who was so famously shown on the Bayeux tapestry, striking Harold Godwinson from horseback with a sword after the Saxon had been struck by an arrow. _Harold Rex Interfectus Est._ After Hastings, Philip became an adventurer, returning a few years later, married to a Christian convert Moor, Princess Boteina, daughter of King Motamid of Seville and his wife, Al-Rumaikiyya and with a son of the same age of Agathe.

Many at the Norman Courts in London and Winchester were displeased with the marriage of the heir to one of the most powerful nobles to an outsider who had not been born a Christian, and indeed the ageing Dunstan and Kaja were somewhat unhappy. It did not take long for the beautiful princess, who had learnt the craft of the language from her mother and father, through the translations of her husband, captivate the nobles, along with her parents-in-law.

William, who had taken a neutral stance on the marriage, frequently had Philip and Boteina at the Court as favourites, and betrothed Agathe, his youngest daughter to the infant Simon Potter, with a quite significant dowry and the headship of the House of Mercia. These arranged marriages were frequent, but often, they developed into genuine affection, and always had a clause for the cancellation of the betrothal if the two didn't get along.

Though rebellions were frequent, the Potter Family continued to expand its wealth throughout to the reign of King William, participating in the Siege of Norwich Castle and witnessing the Oath of Salisbury. Dunstan and Kaja passed on during this time, leaving Philip and and Boteina as heads of the family. Ella, Philip's brother, having found her husband to be utter scum, swiftly disposed of him and took possession of his lands on behalf of her family and remained unmarried to her dying day.

When the Domesday Book was compiled, in Britain, the family held three castles, one palace, three-dozen manors, each housing a knight and his retainers, the various serfs, mills and other expected contents. Each knight had on retainer ten mounted sergeants and an assortment of bowmen and militia.

Simon Potter married Agathe of Normandy when they came of age and took headships of the family from Philip and Boteina as they wanted to return to exploring. After William of Normandy's death, Simon sided with William Rufus against his brother, Robert Curthose, until William paid him and the Potter Family great insult. Days later, William Rufus was struck down by an arrow fired by a master archer in the employ of the family, blamed since on a hunting accident.

Serving Henry I, Simon led the defence against Robert Curthose's invasion of Portsmouth in 1101, and in 1106 fought in the Battle of Tinchebray, decisively defeating Curthose and conquering Normandy. Around this time Dunstan and Boteina returned from their penultimate, and after a few years, quietly passed onto their final adventures. Further fighting took place in the 1110's, in France and Wales, with Caereryr Castle and Château de Leon (a castle inherited through Ella) in Northern France being heavily involved in the fighting. Finally, in 1120, the war in France petered out with a final truce between Henry and Louis, with Simon being granted land in Normandy for his services. The land he found to be suitable for fortifying, and what emerged was to become one of the greatest fortresses in Northern Europe. The only other interesting event in his reign as Earl Potter was the need to dispose of the new Flemish King, William Clito, arouse. Poison always worked.

Aged nearly sixty, Simon established himself and his family of one son and two daughters in the Château la Sombre, his newly-built fortress to fend off a rebellion by the Southern Norman barons in France. Unfortunately, around this time, his twenty-five year old son, James, grew bored and might have accidentally started 'The Anarchy' when he loaded a ship in Barfleur with barrels of wine from one of the family's extensive vineyards and then allowed William, Henry I's only legitimate male heir to use the vessel, along with his retinue and court.

The following war had Simon, until he died, James and his sisters siding with Robert of Blois against Matilda, while also having to defend their lands on the Scottish and Welsh borders, as well as Normandy, from frequent attacks. Sibylla and Alice prove themselves capable commanders, despite the rarity of women participating in combat.

When the civil war finally ended, Matilda controlled some of south-western England, the rest up to the Midlands being in the hands of Steven, and the North being under the control of barons who did their own will, which meant that the Potters, whose lands were spread out, had a hard time keeping their dominance. Yet they still controlled the borders with Scotland, Wales and if necessary, could have retreated to Normandy.

James served for a couple of years as Stephen's ambassador to the Byzantine Empire and married Zoe Komnene, the youngest sister of John II Komnenos, the Byzantine Emperor before returning to Britain with his bride. Despairing of the blood on her hands from the civil war, Alice joined a monastery and lived out her life there, while Sibylla, after years and years of independence decided that being home-wife and court-decoration weren't for her, staying unmarried, became a soldier of fortune for many years.

Three children came of James and Zoe's marriage, Alexander, Roger and Hadrian. Still in his teens, Roger, the younger of the two had been attending the court of Frederick, the Holy Roman Empire, when he'd met the Emperor's eldest daughter, Beatrice, who was betrothed to the Sicilian King. Despite her also being in her early teens, they had mutually fallen in love. As with every Potter since Lucius Artorius Castus' son, he was a sorcerer, and with her father's permission due to Sicily opposing the Holy Roman Empire in its wars in Italy, faked her death and they departed for England.

In Britain, Stephen of Blois had been dead for twenty years, Henry II taking the throne. Hadrian, the youngest and most rebelliousof James and Zoe Potter, had run away from home, and eventually found his way into Henry's army as a siege engineer when Henry marched on Ireland in the early 1170s. A few years later, he'd departed for the Holy Land, not to return until 1199 as Count Hadrian of La Bana, a powerful Crusader lord of the Kingdom of Jerusalem who had fought in every major battle the kingdom had seen, and married Maria of Jerusalem and taking her sister as a mistress, saving them both from an epidemic which claimed their mother, the former Queen of Jerusalem.

Alexander took over from his father as Earl Potter, marrying Alice de Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, and with his brother, Roger, quietly began putting Fidelius enchantments on several castles around Britain as Henry slighted many of those built without the permission of the crown during the anarchy, and partook in the castle-building fashion in Ireland, having unknowingly fought in the same wars as his missing youngest brother, Hadrian, but as a knight. He and his brother also fought against the various baronial revolts throughout Normandy and England, as well as the Flemish and French invasions of Normandy.

With Richard an absentee king, the two Potters tried to maintain the stability of the nation, amassing a significant army to repulse a Welsh attack in the early 1190s which saw Caereyr heavily besieged. They were summoned to the Royal Court a few years later where, with Prince John looking on, Eleanor of Aquitaine demanded a quarter of the value of their lands and moneys in silver to pay for the ransom of Richard when he was taken prisoner by the Duke of Austria and held in the custody of the Holy Roman Emperor, Roger's brother-in-law and the only man in Germany who knew that Zoe had not in fact died.

Alexander, in an utter fury, swore not to give a penny toward the ransom as he felt releasing Richard would do more harm than good to Britain, and when threatened by the Queen Mother, replied that if she wanted to make war on them, that they would happily return the favour, before storming out.

When Richard returned, the Potters continued to refuse to attend the court, remaining behind firmly closed gates and impenetrable walls. In the time that followed, Richard attempted to strip them of their titles, only to find that the writs granting them had been very carefully worded so that there was simply no legal way to remove said titles. He returned to France and died in battle there, slain by a child.

Hadrian returned to Britain from the Holy Land and reunited with his family, who received the favour of King John for their defiance of his brother, though still there were grudges against them in the English court. During John's reign, despite many disagreements with the monarch, the three, Alexander, Roger and Hadrian, fended off many attacks on England, the five-hundred assorted horsemen and thousand infantry and archers the youngest had brought back with him from the Holy Land proving themselves useful.

Roger retired from battling, going with his wife Beatrice into obscurity, both tiring of the constant fighting. They had no children, nor did Hadrian, the youngest, most warlike of the three, who prosecuted the war with the rebel barons and the invading Prince Louis with great vigour before going on, at an ever-advancing age, to fight in Henry III's late 1220s invasion of France, becoming ever more impulsive in battle after Alice and Maria passed on. Finally, over eighty, he fought in several skirmishes in which he accounted for himself well before being struck down by a French knight's lance. At the orders of the sixteen-year old King Louis, his body was taken from the battlefield and laid to rest in the Basilica of St. Denis.

As the last surviving, and the eldest brother, Alexander and his wife Alice handed the reigns of the family to his son, Robert, who was married to Princess Constance of Navarra, while Robert's son, Fredrick was married to Susanna ferch Llywelyn. When Henry III issued gold pennies, the Potters hoarded them, hiding away a phenomenal amount of the precious metal in the treasuries of their castles, which were constantly having their defences improved as war brewed once again. Soon in the hands of Fredrick Potter, with his grandfather Alexander and father Robert dying of old age, war broke out in England again, with Henry III's war in Sicily draining the Crown Treasury and the poor company he chose in his court stirring the barons into rebellion.

Once again, the Potter family was put to the test, with Fredrick, Susanna and their children Ceridwin and Cedric having to fend off attacks by the rebels when they decided that the crown must prevail, however much reforms were needed. It ended in the late 1160s with the crown prevailing, and for their steadfast service, the Potters continued to be rewarded, and within a few years, the king was dead.

Throughout the reign of Edward Longshanks, the ageing Frederick fought against the Welsh rebels, ironic that his father-in-law had been de-facto ruler of Wales. He fought to protect their interests in the west while the king continued prosecuting a war with Scotland to no avail.

Cedric, his son, married Countess Phillipa, daughter of Count Guy of Flanders and had one son, Charles, who inherited the estates, along with a significant German one after his sister Ceridwin's childless marriage to one of Germany's feudal princes when both died, leaving him mourning for his sister and having to become involved in the mess of German politics. It was due to a threat during these times that he repeated the actions of his great-grandfather's middle brother, Roger, in faking his wife's death in Paris in 1306.

However, overseas politics and defending against Welsh incursions kept Cedric Potter out of the civil war in England until he was bidden by Edward to join him against the Earl of Lancaster. He was paid a great fortune to raise an army from Flanders through his wife, and within days of having the treasure placed, was campaigning against Edward and his 'favourite' Hugh Despenser.

It was some time and great bloodshed on the King's part to force the Potters to Caereryr where they held up behind impressively powerful and complex enchantments, as well great fortifications. There they stayed for two years before Isabella of France, the Queen, returned from the continent with an army of sufficient size that the King was overthrown, and the forces besieging the Potters were utterly destroyed in a single fell swoop from both sides, attacked by the invaders and attacked by a force sallying out from the castle.

The royal favour of the Potter family was reaffirmed by Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer for their holding out against Edward for two long years, and though the noblemen of England were worried by the power that was being amassed by successive generations of the Earls Potter, Cedric never tried to wield that power save once, when he assembled a great plethora of siege engines to besiege Caerphilly Castle, which took several months to surrender and hand over Hugh Despenser, the son of Hugh Despenser (who coincidentally was the son of Hugh Despenser).

Precedent was set for how the family would act for centuries to come. Thomas Potter, who was head of the family at the time that the War of the Roses drew to a close, threw his lot in with the House of York... for as long as it took for the great amount of money granted from the crown to raise an army to be transported to Caereryr Castle. From the moment that the heavily-escorted caravan carrying the chests of gold was within the courtyard of the fortress, Thomas was with the Lancastrians.

The only other major interventions by members of the Potter family were by Edward Potter and his wife Lucretia Vendramin, daughter of Doge Vendramin of Venice, when they quietly forced Henry VIII to add an exception Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542 so that the Potters would remain 'Marcher' Lords, and when the couple again, did much to fight against the Reformation, hiding numerous Catholics in the walls of their homes. Then Edward and Lucretia's son, Peter Potter would go on to serve against the Armada, leading a squadron of ships in battle.

Centuries later, Andrew Potter entered Russia in the midst of the Bolshevik Revolution and, in Yekaterinburg, found the badly injured Grand Duchess Anastasia lying in a heap of bodies, he quickly removed her, healed what he could and, upon finding out her identity, smuggle her from the country. The traumatised Anastasia refused to leave the company of Andrew until her death, thinking that with him present that no harm could come to her.

Their sons Charlus and Oliver were the last to intervene in Britain on a large scale. Charlus ran spy cells across Europe through the Second World War and the Cold War up until his death in 1970, while Oliver flew in the RAF during WWII, and after the war, stayed in the service until the Dhofar Rebellion, when he threw his lot in with Qaboos bin Said al-Said, radically modernising Oman and becoming extremely wealthy in his own right. Staying a bachelor until his death, Oliver's fortune, and a large number of aircraft he and Charlus had collected from the 1930s onwards went to the Potter Family, a special airfield being constructed to take the aircraft.

It was this heritage, this hardware which Hadrian, son of James and grandson of Charlus was to inherit.


	38. Solving Problems with Naval Artillery

**1988, the Persian Gulf**

Easily balanced on the slightly rolling and pitching deck of the port bridge wing of one of a series of ghostly ships on the morning mist-shrouded Straits of Hormuz in Persian Gulf, a slight figure bent down behind powerful binoculars mounted on a pivot. Sighing, he straightened up, taking a sip from a Thermos flask.

"You think they'll make a move?" he asked, hearing the light beat of footsteps on the metal deck.

"It's possible. We're a hundred miles from the turning point past the Musandam Peninsula. That's about seven and a quarter hours, then another hundred from there until we leave the Iranian missile boats' hunting ground." grunted Robert MacGuire, the fleet commander.

Harry Potter settled for simply listening to the distant throb of the engines. When he'd first found out about magic, the magical world and his family, he had decided against following his father and mother's footsteps in attending the wizarding school, but instead quietly acquired control of a quite large estate that his grandfather had been the last head of.

While Harry wasn't old enough, technically, he'd found no death certificates for his parents, and because the estate was held in the non-magical world, he'd simply used his uncle's money to hire a representative in his father's name. One estate later, he found that Charlus, father of his father James, had been gearing up for a major blood war in the magical world, possibly resulting in a war with Russia. Even after his death, the estate had been at work in building up for this conflict.

An odd sense of humour resulted in a military contractor company named 'Sink Inc.' with Robert MacGuire as Commander of Seaborne forces. A year ago, they'd been sat off the coast of Angola, just one vessel instead of the three Sink Inc. warships in the Gulf, at a cost of one-hundred and fifty thousand pounds per day from the South African government. It wasn't much, adding together the cost of paying the crew of nearly seven-hundred ratings and fifty officers, the cost of the ordnance that they were 'delivering' to the Angolans on behalf of the South Africans and the 'cost' of the fuel. The current cost was about sixty pounds per tonne, they carried seventeen-hundred tonnes, but at a twelve-knot cruise, they burnt nearly fifty-thousand pounds-worth of it in twenty-four hours.

It was good fortune that each vessel carried a wizard who could use a simple refilling charm to refill the bunkers at no cost except magic. Their customers didn't need to know about that and a significant profit could be made.

Their current contract was to a major shipping company, for a million pounds a day, the cruisers Ceylon, Blake and Nigeria, each saved from the breaker's yard, provided escort and a force of twenty assorted Admiralty Type-A Dark Class, Brave Class and Gay Class fast patrol boats stationed in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman to provide an escort to the Musandam Peninsula, another escort away from it, and a quick-reaction force if they were engaged.

"Red three-zero, about twelve-hundred yards, got something in the water." Harry suddenly announced; "Looks like a drifting mine."

"Damn. Can't hit something that close, the guns won't depress that far." cursed Robert.

"Send for a rifle, I can probably hit that with the light fifty." Harry grinned. He'd won three out of the last four annual Sink Inc. long-range shooting competitions.

"Seaman! Get a Barrett fifty from the armoury, and a couple of magazines of ammunition." Robert barked to one of the seamen on the bridge.

It took a minute for the sailor to return with the rifle, leaving the floating mine even closer. Harry snatched the rifle from him, standing on a folding metal plate which could be used as a seat on long watches. Unfolding the bipod and resting the gun on the wall of the bridge wing, slotting in a magazine and racking the charging handle.

They'd lost maybe a third of the distance between the flagship, Ceylon, and the mine. Harry hadn't bothered with school in a few years, preferring to teach himself, and one of his strengths was mathematics. Cut a third of the distance, eight-hundred yards. It took a second to set the scope's zeroing to eight-hundred yards, and had already checked the windage, sixteen knots headwind.

He fired.

"Short. Fifty yards." reported Robert from behind the naval binocular-rangefinder.

Harry angled the rifle up a couple of degrees and fired again. The recoil jerked the rifle back, but didn't slam it heavily into his shoulder like some game rifles he'd fired. Even as the round travelled, Harry knew he'd missed as the ship had rolled as he was firing. The splash wasn't far off the sea mine. He cursed and took aim again, hearing Robert guessing three or so yards beyond of his target.

Breathing lightly and counting the waves, he waited until the warship was rock-steady and fired. The shockwave could be felt on the bridge of Ceylon as the mine detonated, a huge spout of water erupting from the blast.

"Charlie Alpha One, we just detonated a floating naval mine." Robert stated over the intercom, using his callsign as he'd also selected to radio it to Bravo Alpha and November Alpha, the cruisers Blake and Nigeria, each leading a column of tanker vessels in echelons port and starboard of Ceylon's column. At about forty dollars a barrel, with the thirty ships in their convoy carrying an average of three million barrels of oil, the three cruisers and the five fast patrol boats accompanying them were protecting a value of three billion, six-hundred million dollars in black gold.

Nearer Kuwait, ten of Sink Inc.'s Algerine Class minesweepers with five fast patrol boats were doing a similar job of minehunting, but with specialised equipment. It had been embarrassing for the US Navy when they had found they had no ocean-going minesweepers, and had been forced to hire Sink Inc.'s antiquated vessels to work in the Persian Gulf.

"I took the night watch, d'you mind if..." began Robert.

"Not at all, get a few hours sleep, I'll send someone to get you up if anything goes down." Harry nodded.

"Captain's off the bridge!" announced the bridge control officer as Robert headed down to his cabin; "Are you taking over Commander Potter?"

"For now." Harry nodded; "Keep me updated with radar and sonar reports, let me know as soon as the relief patrol boat screen is on radar. Anything unexpected, tell me. Seaman Barnes, port bridge wing."

On Ceylon, the bridge wings were set well back, giving him a better view forward from the interior of the bridge, where he settled, grabbing Robert's Zeiss binoculars from their case on the ledge of the bridge windows. Three hours into his shift and suddenly the peace was shattered with a call from the sonar crew.

"Diesel engine just started magnetic three-four-zero!" called the sonar officer.

Harry strode out onto the bridge wing, jamming his face against the eyepiece of the powerful naval binoculars mounted there, scanning the surface urgently until suddenly he spotted something out of place. A stream of disturbed water, and at the root of it, a periscope.

"Prepare to come about two-seven-zero!" he snapped, focusing on the periscope; "Stand by depth charges, Limbo and forward port four inch turret! Radio the USS Wadsworth and inform them of the situation."

Sparing a moment's glance to ensure his orders were followed, Harry returned his eyes to the binoculars as the submarine, stationary, allowed the cruiser Ceylon to sail perpendicular to him. Then two distinct wakes in the water.

"Engines one and two back full, engines three and four ahead full, rudder hard over!" Harry ordered, making sure to keep his voice level and calm, if sharp; "Forward port four inch is to open fire."

A cacophonous roar erupted from the twin-gun mount as the loaders almost threw home shells into the breech, the guns immediately firing. Spouts of water erupted from around the submarine as Ceylon shook, her four massive propellers thrumming under them, churning the sea into an angry froth. The stern dug in and the bow rose slightly. The deck tilted to starboard as the ten-plus thousand ton warship swung around to port and charged straight towards the submarine which swiftly dived.

"Four inch cease fire! All engines full ahead flank!" he stated. One. Two. Three.

Calculations were running in Harry's head. The submarine had been near a standstill when they charged. Ceylon had gathered twenty knots. Four. Five. Six. There was a loud clang which echoed through the ship as two torpedoes failed to arm prior to hitting the warship, and, allowing a grim smile, the teenager on the bridge kept counting. Seven. Eight Nine. One mile distance to cover from the turn. Add five-hundred and fifty-five feet of ship for the stern depth charges. Sixty seconds exactly at twenty knots for depth charges, ten seconds to bring the Limbo mortar to minimum range. TEN!

"Fire Limbo!" Harry snapped.

A Sink Inc. after-market modification of two triple-barrelled spigot mortars on the bow coughed, sending depth charges over the bow. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five. At thirty seconds, he snapped on the intercom directly to the crew on the stern of the warship even as Ceylon sailed through the plumes of water from the first Limbo mortars.

"Roll depth charge one." and waited, counting patiently for five seconds; "Roll depth charge two." allowing another interval before continuing the attack.

Finally, with six massive plumes of water erupting from the sea as, one after another, the six depth charges, Harry called off the engagement.

"Make turn two-seven-zero." he ordered; "Hold for thirty seconds, repeat, repeat."

Just as the ship was partway through making the first of three ninety degree turns to rejoin the convoy, there was a call from the port bridge wing.

"Sir, I think you ought to see this!"

Harry walked out onto the bridge wing as a dark shape erupted from the water. A submarine no doubt, but a small one, maybe sixty feet in length and a distinctive rudder set-up of two fins visible above the water in a butterfly shape.

"It's a Yugoslavian midget submarine. Koreans are fond of 'em." commented Seaman Barnes.

"You know, I've always wanted to do this." Harry grinned, pressing the push to talk on the bridge wing intercom; "Secondary batteries, free fire zone."

Immediately two batteries of four inch guns began blazing away at near point blank range. Suddenly, the submarine erupted with a column of smoke and fire from just behind the sail, before lifting out of the water and shattering in half before each end made its final dive.

"Cease fire." he stated before returning to the bridge; "Helmsman, bring us back on station."

"Aye sir."

"And call the crew down at the flag locker to hoist Calico Jack's Jolly Roger below the Raven." Harry added.

"I believe that would be a nice touch." commented a voice from behind Harry, causing him to spin around suddenly and nearly lose his balance, meeting the visage of Robert leaning against the back wall of the bridge; "I thought you were going to get me if anything happened."

"Things happened and there wasn't exactly time." Harry replied sheepishly; "Besides how long were you stood watching."

"Most of the engagement." Robert admitted; "You did damn well. You kept your cool but acted quickly and decisively. I both look forward to and dread the day you captain your own ship. You'll be a damn good captain but you'll put me out of a job."

"Navigator, range to point two?" Harry barked the question.

"Point two on the Musandam Peninsula is forty-eight miles sir." replied the navigator.

"Mind holding the fort Robert, I need a drink before I'm sick." Harry muttered.

"You okay?" asked Robert.

"Never had someone directly try to sink me." replied Harry before slinking off in search of some water.

Robert MacGuire shook his head. The boy was barely in his teens but was cunning as a fox and mature beyond his years. A slight grin broke out on his face as he walked out onto the bridge wing and saw the crossed scimitars below a skull being run up the flag mast below Sink Inc.'s own flag, a Nordic raven.

"Reduce speed, twelve knots, hold station." he called as they ran back up the convoy to the head of the centre line of ships.

* * *

Half-an-hour after the sinking, Harry walked into his cabin, briefly going to the sink to wash his face. The water was reinvigorating, and he felt a touch better as he towelled off and redid all but the top button of his white shirt. Uniform on Sink Inc. warships not in the cold climes of the Atlantic, the North Sea, the far north or the far south was a short-sleeved white shirt and trousers with peaked cap for officers and a white sailor suit and seaman's cap for those not of officer rank. A single thick gold ring adorned each of his epaulettes, signifying the rank of sub-lieutenant, the rank he'd agreed with Robert to hold until he was sixteen in exchange for coming out on operations with his ships.

Other sub-lieutenants held posts such as the command of a turret or other parts of the warfare systems. While the patrol boats providing an escort screen for the tankers and cruisers were commanded by Lieutenants, on board Ceylon, Blake and Nigeria, the Lieutenants held command of a type of warfare system, such as the main battery of three triple six-inch turrets or the four dual four-inch turrets, while.

The bridge was typically occupied by several Lieutenant-Commanders, the navigator being the most important, while the others fulfilled the roles of command surface and anti-air warfare including all detection and weapons systems, running anti-submarine warfare with all detection systems and weapons systems and the fourth of that rank who was in charge of engineering matters on the ship.

Nigeria and Blake's captains were both of the rank of Commander, while Robert MacGuire, as well as being ship's captain, was convoy escort commander and held the rank of Captain. At their home port built in the western isles of Scotland, the senior officer was a Commodore Bran Jones, a late middle-aged Welshman with several decades of naval experience who was in charge of the combined fleet of ships Sink Inc. owned.

After leaving his room and climbing up a series of staircases in the central citadel of the cruiser, Harry walked onto the bridge, making a beeline for Robert who was sat in the captain's chair, surveying the sea.

"I've been thinking, why didn't that submarine go for one of the tankers with all the fuel on board?" Harry said quietly; "They wouldn't have been able to turn into the attack or fire back."

"If they'd sunk us, another ship, one of the warships, would have stopped to pull us out of the water." Robert replied thoughtfully, running a hand along his beard; "That ship would have been vulnerable to a torpedo. Two warships in one go, but at greater risk to themselves. Submarine captains are always the risky gamblers."

"But if the plan had gone according to their script, we and probably another warship would be sunk, reducing the escort to either two cruisers or one cruiser and the Yank frigate down the back." stated Harry; "Either way, halving the escort."

"Further attack, you think?" asked Robert.

"If I were arranging the devastation of this convoy, based on my actions already in the submarine attack, having sat on the bottom of the Gulf waiting for the convoy with engines silent, a targeted attack. If I've halved the escort by sinking two warships, I'll hold back because the patrol boats have finite range, they'll peel off to Ras al-Khaimah but the relief is joining us off Khasab, there's a gap there in our cover." Harry replied slowly.

"Missile boats, it's within range Qeshm Island, swarm the convoy." Robert commented grimly; "Radioman, to patrol boat screen commander, can you remain with us until relieved, stop."

"Yes sir." replied the radioman as he prepared to make the signal to the patrol boats.

"Honestly, I'm rather looking forward to getting out of this place." admitted Robert.

"We let this lot go as we pass the far-eastern point of Oman, we hold for a day or two, pick up one more convoy, bring it into Kuwait and then our contract's over, we pick up the Algerines, the various patrol boats and head out of here. I think that we can spend a day or two off Sharm el-Sheikh." said Harry; "God knows the men deserve a break."

"Agreed." nodded Robert; "But then we need to get home. Three cruisers, ten minesweepers and twenty-five patrol boats, we've got about three-thousand five-hundred men out here. This business is fairly young and we need people ashore. Until employment picks up a bit..."

"Mhmm." Harry replied.

He knew the problems and he knew some of the solutions. The fleet was immense, but most of it was in covered drydock under stasis charms essentially halting the ravages of time and protected from the ravages of the weather, otherwise the cost would be horrifically prohibitive in terms of money and manpower. One battleship, one battlecruiser, one French heavy cruiser, one Swedish light cruiser, a British complement of two helicopter cruisers, a mine-laying cruiser and four light cruisers.

The American complement was made up of ten heavy cruisers, fourteen light cruisers with a further three heavy and four light cruisers awaiting reconversion from SAM cruisers to their original configuration. When big guns weren't the answer, there were also seven frigates, three sloops, thirty-four destroyers, various minesweepers, patrol boats and half-a-dozen diesel-electric submarines. All acquired since Charlus Potter began, in a fit of paranoia, ramping up for a major naval war.

They currently had about two-hundred officers and five-thousand ratings. If he tried to equip just the battleship Jean Bart and the battlecruiser Yavuz, they'd use up half of that complement of men. Two-thousand five-hundred men. The British cruisers needed a total of four-thousand eight-hundred men, the American ones far more.

"Sir, signal from patrol leader, will have to reduce patrol screen to five Dark Class and two Brave class but will remain with convoy until relieved." the radioman reported.

"Thank you." Robert replied; "Bloody inconvenient. The Braves have gas turbines which run on jet fuel, the Darks have Deltic railway engines which burn diesel and the Gays burn aviation-grade petrol in their Packards. And we don't have enough wizards to have each vessel equipped with one."

"We do what we have to do and what we can do." Harry sighed; "I'm already working on a few ideas on that front. Converting all the Gays and Darks to turbines. Expanded fuel tanks and more wizards. More crews full stop."

"D'you think..." began Robert.

"That you could have one or two of the Packards to put in a car?" Harry sighed, remembering what had happened when he'd recently had a refit done of the Type Two high speed launches used for pottering about the dockyard, replacing their three Napier Lions with three Rolls-Royce Tynes at the expense of part of the onboard sickbays. Quadruple the power. However, what he hadn't expected was for the engineering department at Robert's behest to come up with a series of nineteen-twenties style luxury and racing cars using some of the thirty Lions they removed. Harry shook his head, trying to concentrate on the present "Do we call Blake, ask them to put up one of their Sea Kings helicopters to scout ahead?"

"Time to turn?" Robert asked the navigator.

"Turn in forty miles or two-hours fifty minutes at current speed." Lieutenant-Commander James 'Sarney' Sandwich replied; "The Sea King will complete the requested reconnaissance in approximately twenty minutes before returning in a similar time."

"Thank you James." said Robert; "Kennedy, what's the surface radar looking like?"

"My surface-and-air warning Type Two-Seven-Seven is giving me thirty miles surface range." Kennedy, the surface warfare officer replied; "Fire control is working at optimum sixteen mile range."

"Hold off on the Sea King, we're pretty much covered with radar" Robert ordered before commenting to Harry quietly; "Wish we had Newfoundland out here."

"I know. But the refit she's going through should allow us to do the job of two warships with just one." replied Harry; "Semi-automatic Mark Sixteen eight inch guns. A the fourth turret, a two-layer enclosed bridge with an open top and a two deck CIC, better sonar, radar, homing torpedoes, Goalkeeper CIWS on the sides of the superstructure, the whole lot. And you'll be captain."

"I suddenly remember why I agreed to your job offer." Robert grinned.

"Sir, request from A turret captain for a practice shoot." stated the surface warfare officer.

"Denied. If we get through safely to Oman, I'll allow them to let off a few broadsides." replied Robert; "If we don't get through safely, then we'll let off a few broadsides a bit earlier."

"I'd prefer to conserve every shell we've got. The magazines only have seventy-five high-explosive incendiaries, fifty armour-piercing capped, fifty cannister rounds and fifty high-explosive rounds per gun." Robert commented; "Two-hundred and twenty-five rounds will go in half-an-hour of battle."

* * *

Two hours later, Harry had just entered the bridge, clutching a toasted beef sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper, relieving Robert to go and get himself some food. A relief watch was due in an hour to take over from the current bridge crew when suddenly, in the bowls of the ship, the radar screens began lighting up.

"Report from radar, twenty individual vessels have just appeared at fifteen miles ten o'clock. Too small for us to get much warning, we are Calculating speed with radar sweep... thirty knots." reported Kennedy, one ear glued to a phone down to radar control.

Harry took a bite of his toasted sandwich, pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

"Would it be too much to simply say 'kill the bastards'?" he growled; "I suppose not. Radio to Blake to remain with convoy, detach Nigeria to follow us. Make full ahead flank three-zero-zero relative. All hands Condition Zulu, Kennedy, get me a firing solution for the main battery and someone call the captain up here!"

With the thrum of the powerful steam turbines and the propellers vibrating through the ship, Harry stood and waited, keeping half-an-eye on his watch. Three minutes later, the damning news came through via Lieutenant-Commander Sandwich, a nervous university meteorology graduate who had a habit of blushing any time he heard the rum language of the seamen.

"The captain appears to be... otherwise occupied." he stated, receiving a flat stare from Harry in return, making him to elaborate smartly; "Enthroned."

"He's on the bog." Harry said blankly before letting loose a muffled curse; "Speed, closing speed and range."

"Speed twenty-six knots, closing speed fifty-six, range is twelve nautical miles, reduced three from target acquisition." Kennedy replied.

"Nigeria?" Harry rapped out, wanting to know the location of the other cruiser.

"Proceeding two miles relative bearing two-zero-zero." was the quick response from the navigator followed by a call of; "Firing solution ready!" from the surface warfare officer, causing Harry to scowl. He had to decide what to do. Either he could wait until the small boats opened fire, wait and gain visual identification and approximately five miles or open fire from beyond the horizon, which would be about three miles away for the small boats.

"Load high explosive." Harry ordered. He wasn't going to chance it. The two cruisers were outnumbered ten-to-one, and he'd seen these types of boats before, laden with rocket projectiles and heavy-machine guns. "Radioman, please inform Nigeria of a free fire zone encompassing the flotilla we are facing. Mister Kennedy, if you wouldn't mind."

"Not at all. Attack boats are splitting into two distinct columns" he grinned, lifting the telephone to the turrets; "Fire control, this is the surface warfare officer, train A turret three-four-zero. I say again A turret three-four-zero. Train B turret zero-two-zero, I say again B turret zero-two-zero. Range, nineteen-thousand yards. Elevate twenty-four degrees and fire for effect."

The crash that reverberated through the ship was cataclysmic. Often naval ships would fire salutes with blank shells or just powder shells, one gun at a time. But with fifteen kilograms of cordite behind a fifty-kilo shell being fired from all six guns... the barrel of each gun contained the propellent charge and the shell, which created an immense compression behind the shell and the resulting blast was amplified. Each gun was slung back in the turrets by the recoil before they sank to reload.

The entire bridge was silent with baited breath. Over the entire flight of the shells, they'd average about two-thousand feet per second, a little bit short of Mach Two. At thirty seconds from the first barrage, Kennedy received the report from the radar operators.

"Initial radar reports suggest barrage was successful. Three radar contacts lost." he stated.

"Resume firing." Harry grinned; "Try and get the captain off the throne."

"Wilco." replied Kennedy, lifting the phone to the turret directors and to the fire controllers; "Fire control, you are to concentrate on radar contacts zero-two-zero. Rolling barrage, maximum rate of fire, begin."

The forward turret rotated to face the relative bearing zero-two-zero, and almost immediately, the first blast rocked the ship. Then with relentless fury, the barrage began. Each gun fired a shell and the very next second, another gun fired until each gun had fired, by which time the first had reloaded and the cycle began again. They were hurling a shell every second from the forward battery in a deadly cacophony.

Harry moved to the rear of the bridge where screens connected to the radar centre in the bowls of the ship showed what the operators down there could see. He wasn't an expert, but he had a fair idea what the blips on the bright orange circular displays were. Kennedy joined him in surveying the radar displays before both froze. Blips in a neatly arrayed line were moving in from the lower right quadrant behind them, putting themselves between Ceylon, Nigeria and the convoy.

"They're either trying to attack the convoy while we're engaged or they're trying to surround us." Kennedy stated.

"Make two-zero-zero degrees relative and maintain full ahead flank." Harry ordered, the two-minute barrage having closed the range to just seven miles; "Train the rear turret and the four inch guns on the first group, broadside until the forward battery is unable to train, and keep firing the rear battery until we're out of range or out of targets. Ask the engine room for everything they've got, I want to cut in between the southern group of targets and the convoy. Request Blake deliver fire, hopefully that will slow them and they'll try and dodge the fire."

"Did something interesting happen?!" demanded a rather ruffled-looking Robert who was panting slightly, having dashed through the ship, having to open and close hatches to get to the bridge.

"We decided to let off a few dozen barrages just for fun." Harry said with a deadpan look as the entire ship was rocked by a staccato ten-second rolling broadside from all the guns followed by a single huge broadside with all the guns let off at once.

* * *

**September 1990, Sink Inc. Headquarters in the Western Isles of Scotland**

In the impressive Queen Anne-style complex known to one and all as 'The Admiralty', Harry Potter propped up his boots on his desk, pushing a pile of paperwork into his 'out' tray. He glanced at a large poster on the wall, an enlarged copy of a popular London tabloid simply entitled 'BANG' with an image taken from a supertanker in a convoy his company had been protecting. In the foreground were the two light cruisers Ceylon and Nigeria simultaneously firing a massive broadside of eighteen six-inch main-battery guns and eight four-inch secondary guns.

Three years had passed since that photograph was take, and Sink Inc. had increased manpower to fifteen thousand sailors, their cruisers escorting dozens more convoys through the Persian Gulf, fighting off the coast of Liberia and providing shore bombardment for the Americans off Panama while destroyers had been hired by Senegal to protect their fishing rights and assisting in the border war. Clever investment of returns from these operations allowed them to cover costs, mainly paying the sailors, and make a healthy profit.

However, Harry was expecting further engagement of their services. In the weeks just passed, Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait when they refused to forgive his debts to them made in the Iran-Iraq war. Kuwait being an old British protectorate and a close ally of the west, it was likely that if Hussein didn't withdraw, war would descend on him.

So he had just come up with a plan for several battlegroups based around their capital ships. The battleship Jean Bart and the battlecruiser Goeben would be the centre of two fleets. All three of the Crown Colony class cruisers had all received the upgrades including American self-loading eight-inch guns, modern radar, CIWS, homing torpedoes, a better CIC and a larger bridge.

The three of them, with a crew of seven-hundred, along with the lone French heavy cruiser Suffren who had a similarly-sized crew, two Oregon City class heavy cruisers and the eight Baltimore class heavy cruisers with crews of a thousand would make the cruiser force one of fourteen ships and thirteen thousand men. Add in the battleship Jean Bart and the battlecruiser Goeben with new oil-fired boilers and the limit would be reached for personnel. He intended to place one Crown Colony class cruiser in the Jean Bart battlegroup as the battleship had her own CIWS emplacements, and the cruiser would be able to provide anti-air cover for the six American heavies that would form the rest of the group. Goeben didn't have much in the way of modern equipment, so would have two CIWS equipped Crown Colonies, Suffren and four American heavies.

In the fortnight since the invasion, Harry had authorised the covered drydocks opened, the ships floated and brought out into the bay in readiness for exercises which were to begin in five hours. He could hear the distant whine of jets in the launches and patrol boats ferrying out crew to the ships. Despite having not turned sixteen, Harry's jacket now had two gold stripes of a Lieutenant, having been sailing for three years with several combats under his belt. It helped that he owned the fleet though.

* * *

Stepping onto the port bridge wing of the battleship Jean Bart, Harry first surveyed the ship he was on. She was long, two-hundred and fifty more than one of the United States Navy's newest Ticonderoga Class cruisers. Sleek, with a raked bow presenting a forward battery of eight fifteen-inch naval guns capable of two rounds a minute per gun.

The secondary armament of nine five-point-nine inch guns split between three turrets had been replaced with the spare six-inch guns left from the conversion of the Crown Colony class cruisers, doubling the rate of fire. Her twelve twin three-point-nine inch anti-aircraft weapons had been replaced by Quick-Firing Four-and-a-Half Inch Mark Fives with autoloaders. This gave Jean Bart the capability for each of the twenty-four barrels to put up a shell every two-and-a-half seconds, the same as the previous guns but with twenty-five kilo shell, double the weight of the previous projectiles. The murderous armament was completed with fourteen light anti-aircraft emplacements being replaced with four Goalkeeper CIWS mounts and three more QF 4.5 Inch Mark V mounts to give her thirty of the guns.

Then in the bay, the six remaining ships of the battlegroup were raising steam to make for the sea. Suffren had undergone a rather less radical modifications program, simply replacing her eight inch main battery with American Eight Inch Mark Sixteen autoloading guns, her eight ninety-millimetre single anti-aircraft guns were replaced with QF 4.5 Inch Mark Vs to double the rate of fire and nearly triple the shell weight. The same single QF 4.5 Inch guns replaced four twin thirty-seven millimetre gun emplacements, which slightly increased the rate of fire and multiplied shell weight by nine.

Jean Bart and Suffren were to be accompanied out by Ceylon, which had received QF 4.5 Inch Mark Vs in four twin mountings, her main battery turrets modified to take eight inch Mk.16 autoloading guns and four Goalkeeper CIWS replacing her four quadruple 'pom-poms'. The remaining ships, four Baltimore Class heavy cruisers had also received a bit of a makeover with the auto-loading Mk.16 naval guns and six twin QF 4.5 Inch Mark Vs.

Harry quickly calculated that between them, in a single minute, they could fire a barrage of sixteen fifteen-inch shells, nine-hundred and eighty eight-inch shells, seventy-two six-inch shells, two-thousand seven-hundred and fifty four-point-five inch shells, plus Bofors forty-millimetre, Goalkeeper thirty-millimetre and Oerliken 20mm.

"Looking forward to getting to Cape Wrath?" asked Robert, nearly bouncing out onto the bridge wing.

"Very much so." Harry allowed himself a slight smile; "I heard you went out yesterday with her and went through the more interesting bits of the Western Isles, how did it go?"

"For a warship of her size, she puts a shift on. Plenty of rudder authority and good ability to use the outer propellers to yaw. I think I may have given a fishing trawler out of Oban a heart attack." Robert grinned; "You can imagine. There was quite a sea fog and I came bearing down about three quarters of a mile off his starboard side, going flat out at about thirty-four miles an hour."

"Yes, I think I can imagine." Harry laughed; "Well, Commodore, if you'd like to get us underway."

* * *

**September 1990, Cape Wrath Firing Range, Scotland**

"Why d'you think the First Sea Lord himself has us out here?" mumbled a patch of rough gorse to a nearby rock, which unfolded itself into a burly humanoid figure, raising a set of binoculars to his eyes.

"Apparently some military contractor's going to be coming up here with some boats to do a bit of shooting. People with scrambled egg on their hats want to know what kind of heat they're packing." the second camouflaged man replied.

His words were followed by a distant rumble as Jean Bart fired a full broadside at twenty-two miles. The shells climbed in a parabola faster than the speed of sound while the sound travelled a lesser distance. The result was incredible.

"Thunder?" asked the first camouflaged man.

His answer came as eight fifteen inch shells plunged into the small island about four miles from their observation post. They cratered it heavily, the best part of seven tons of metal and explosive descending at Mach one-point-four and nearly forty degrees from the horizontal.

"Jesus feckin' Christ!" yelled the patch of gorse over the residual noise from the blast; "That was no peashooter."

They both quickly pulled on hearing-protection equipment at retreated to a garishly-pink painted Alvis Saracen used for range maintenance, closing the doors and hatches just as another salvo erupted on the island. After the first two, another sixteen salvoes were to be heard before all hell broke loose. Ten minutes of shelling had allowed the heavy cruisers to enter the range of their eight inch guns. Ceylon, Suffren and four Baltimore Class opened fire with their forward batteries, totalling thirty-four guns in addition to Jean Bart's eight.

"The team in the lighthouse report that there are at least five ships out there, maybe as many as forty-two. The first barrage came from approximately twenty-three miles, closing to seventeen miles before intensifying." the man camouflaged in rocky grey stated after listening to his radio for a moment.

"Twenty-three miles? Seventeen miles? Can any of our destroyers do that?" asked the gorse-camouflaged observer.

"Best you'll get for naval bombardment from them is thirteen miles." was the negative response.

"Bloody hell. Whoever this company is, they're packing enough heat to take out our ships before they can get off a single round unless an Exocet frigate takes them out."


	39. Unhorsed - Game of Thrones-Harry Potter

**276 Years After Conquest, Lannisport, the Westerlands of Westeros**

"It is the greatest honour of my lord Tywin Lannister to declare the final day of the jousts of this tournament, held in honour of His Grace, Aerys of the House Targaryen, the Second of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm." boomed the herald announcing the tournament; "The tournament is dedicated to Viserys Targaryen, newborn Prince of Westeros, third of his name, Heir to the Iron Throne and the House Targaryen."

The Master of the Lists stepped forward, unfurling a roll of parchment as he took over from the herald.

"The competitors of today's joust are as follows. Prince Rhaegar Targaryen of the House Targaryen." he stated as a tall man with shoulder-length silver hair rode up on a white horse, bowing to the royal box. "Ser Tygett and Ser Gerion of House Lannister." he continued, pausing as two men, not unlike the first, though with darker, shorter blond hair, riding bay steeds came up. "Kingsguard Ser Barristan Selmy." another pause as a man of about forty rode up, confidently poised in the saddle, clad in the gold-tinted armour and white cloak of one of the elite Kingsguard. "And finally, the Knight of Black." a final competitor rode up, not wearing the heavy plate of any of the others. On a coal-black charger, he was swathed in a black cloak, hood casting his face into shadows. Chainmail was visible beneath a black leather surcoat, itself darkened. A silver cuirass was visible extending over his shoulders from under the surcoat. He bowed in the saddle to the the royal box before turning away and trotting to the far end of the tilt.

"The first bout is between Ser Tygett and the Knight of Black!" he called out as the two knights turned towards each-other, on each side of the tilt barrier. Somehow, the Black Knight had placed a great helm on, without removing the hood of his cloak.

Taking a shield, as black as his cloak with no crest, he held it close to his side, taking a lance, its only decoration being thin gold rings every couple of feet, he turned his charger to face down the tilt and at an unseen signal, charged. The two horses galloped forward, the Black Knight stood in the saddle, lunging forward with the lance. Balanced carefully in the stirrups, he leaned over the galloping horse's head, cloak billowing around him, extending his reach. The weapon struck true, landing on Tygett Lannister's shield, throwing him from the saddle, though fracturing the Black knight's lance.

At the end of the tilt, the Black Knight wheeled his horse around to see Tygett struggling in the mud, churned by the hoof-beats of a hundred charges. Silently, he trotted down before the royal box, bowed in the saddle before turning away, tossing his fractured lance to the boy who he had paid to be his squire. Another knight entered the lists, another Lannister by his coat of arms.

"After victory in the first bout of the day, the Knight of Black retires for the next bout, between Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Ser Gerion Lannister." called out the Master of the Lists as the Lannister took the Black Knight's place and the Prince entered at the far end. Within moments, a second Lannister was thrown from his saddle and once again the nameless knight took his place. "Ser Arthur Deyne and the Knight of Black face each-other in the third and third from last bout!" the Master of the Lists announced.

Raising shield and lance, the Black Knight charged toward Deyne, the thrum of hooves on the packed mud as the two horses and their riders closed. There was a crash as the lances met their targets. Deyne's weapon shattered in the centre as it struck the Black Knight's shield, couched against his side to absorb the blow, while he received the tip of the lance to his chest, throwing him from the saddle.

The penultimate joust soon followed, Ser Barristan Selmy unhorsed by the Prince after breaking two lances. Taking a fresh lance, Rhaegar turned his horse to face the Black Knight as he entered the lists, taking up his own weapon, the first of three allowed for each joust. At an unseen signal, they both charged.

One lance shattered on the first pass, that of the Black Knight, whose weapon struck the Prince's shield. Returning to his end of the list, the black-swathed horseman seized another lance and charged. This time, neither rider's weapons struck their opponent, both missing. Wheeling around, they waited for no signal, charging. Both lances struck home, Rhaegar's shattering in the centre while the tip broke off the black lance, rendering it useless. Throwing it to the ground, the Black Knight took up his third and final lance, while the prince took up his second. Again, there was no signal. Just a thrum of hooves and a crash as the Black Knight unhorsed his opponent, his lance striking the prince's leg with a sickening crack.

The first page of the history of an infamous, nameless and faceless knight. Knighted by the king simply as Ser Black. It wasn't a good day for the Lannisters, who had hoped to recoup some of the costs of the event with their champions taking the prize money, when the prize money vanished with the Black Knight.

* * *

**277 Years After Conquest, before the walls of Storm's End**

"In the name of my lord, Steffon Baratheon, I declare this tournament begun!" called out the herald, projecting his voice to, and above, the crowd around the tilt. "Today, the entrants are as followed. Prince Rhaegar of the House Targaryen. Prince Oberyn of the House Martell. Lord Steffon of the House Baratheon. Lord Jason of the House Mallister. Lord Leyton of House Hightower. Lord Jon of the House Connington. Kingsguard Ser Arthur Dayne of the House Dayne. Kingsguard Ser Barristan Selmy of House Selmy. A nameless knight. And finally, Ser Black."

Ten riders entered the arena, bowing to the royal box. One of them, at the far end of the line, was swathed in the distinctive black robe, well-known from the famous joust at Lannisport. It was another massacre split three ways. In the first bout, Lord Steffon Baratheon, the host, was unhorsed by Ser Black. The second bout resulted in Rhaegar Targaryen sending Jason Mallister from the saddle, followed by the eldest son of Steffon Baratheon, Robert, being unhorsed by Ser Barristan Selmy, an almost legendary knight. Skilfully, Ser Black sent Oberyn Martell into the dust with a lunge in the saddle. The prince broke a lance before unhorsing the nameless knight. Barristan Selmy drove Leyton Hightower into the dust before Ser Black entered the lists again, bringing down Jon Connington.

With both sides breaking near a dozen lances, Rhaegar finally removed Ser Arthur Deyne from the tournament, leaving just the three of them. Ser Barristan then unhorsed him, followed in a bout between him and Ser Black resulting in both knights being unhorsed. By mutual agreement, they decided to finish their business on foot, sword to sword. Finally, after three shattered shields between them, the Black Knight threw Barristan the Bold to the ground, a sword at his throat.

* * *

_AN: I began this, not realising how very little I know about Game of Thrones, having never read the books and only watched clips on Youtube pertaining to my favourite characters (the irreverent Tyrion Lannister and the regretful Barristan Selmy). This is an idea of how I might start a story. You can probably guess who is beneath the black cloak. Yep, Harry. Feel free to adopt as a start._


	40. 1-Until Seagull Poop Bleaches your Bones

**October 2000, ten miles down the valley from Caereryr Castle in the Cambrian Mountains of Wales**

James Potter, having driven to the edge of the 'wizarding anti-raid defences', wards, of the castle and estate in an open-top estate Land Rover. Stepping out of the car, he twisted on the spot, vanishing as he disapparated. Several miles away, James reappeared with an almost silent _swish_ near where he could feel the powerful magic and spells of two of his sons to be, Robert Bones-Potter and Hadrian Potter. As he re-materialised, James's wand leapt into his hand on instinct as a bolt of magic passed him with a thunderclap.

* * *

Rob Bones cursed his half-brother under his breath. Their duelling styles were completely incompatible. He liked holding off at a distance, using transfiguration and charms to control the battle. Harry liked destroying things. Harry fast, too fast to control. He moved in close, wielding a wand and a knife, and the spells issuing from the tip of the former were not combat magic. Harry threw around the more powerful battle magic, for slighting fortresses and enemy armies like duelling spells.

Throwing himself prone under a trebuchet curse which left a fifty foot trench in the loam behind him, Rob gestured with his wand, forcing the ground around him to tip him to his feet, regaining his balance in an instant as his wand weaved back and forth, chaining together a series of nuisance curses, aimed to distract and debilitate. Harry was still moving, closing the distance from the initial engagement distance of a hundred yards. He was barely thirty feet away, swaying through the spells as another bolt of magic raced towards Rob.

Muttering another curse under his breath, he recognised the spell as one known as Haephestus' Hammer, a blunt-impact spell capable of smooshing him and everything in a ten-foot wide, ten-foot tall frame all over Wales. Vanishing seven feet of mud from under his feet, Rob narrowly avoided being pulverised. Smoothly conjuring a waterspout to carry his water resistant-enchanted boots up to ground level, throwing dozens of the only lethal curse he could perform wandlessly, the 'Percutio' piercing curse while he worked a more powerful enchantment with his wand.

That was the moment Rob Bones realised his mistake, splitting his attention between maintaining the waterspout, the wandless casting, the spell he was preparing to cast and his half-brother. Harry swiped his wand at him, a powerful gust of wind destroying the balance of the waterspout holding him up. He plunged into the hole which then collapsed in on him.

Rob gritted his teeth and blasted away the mud, a rapier appearing in his empty hand as he realised Harry had closed the distance and was almost atop him. A skilled swordsman Rob undoubtedly was. He'd recently graduated from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but had resolved more than a few matters of honour and his family's honour by dint of the blade.

However, Harry rarely bothered with a sword. Steel rasped on steel as Harry blocked a lunge with his Fairbairn-Sykes knife, still moving forward until it was difficult for Rob to draw the three-foot blade back to attack again. Rob knew this move had only one way out. He had seen it before under wards which prevented magical travel.

It had been November 1990. Rob Bones had been visiting Hogwarts, attending the first Quidditch match of his half-brother and best friend Edward Potter. When a curse took hold on Edward's broom, Harry had quickly identified the one laying the curse, summoning defence Professor Quirinus Quirrel onto the pitch where the two fought and the Professor died.

It was also the last time he saw his eldest half-brother for nearly three years. In an incredible act of close-mindedness, the Ministry of Magic foisted a permanent suspension on Harry. It had been that very same day that Harry vanished into the non-magical world. Now, ten years later, he was a war veteran, a British Army Major and officer of the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment.

Rob Bones disapparated, only for an anti-apparition jinx to force re-materialisation fifty feet in the air. Cushioning his landing, he conjured powerful roots around Harry, who slashed them apart as they tried to seize him. Rob swiped away three flame-cutting curses that had reached him from the destruction of the roots when a siege mining curse reached him. Shielding himself with the most powerful bunker shield he could manage with a wand, Rob winced as the ground all around him erupted in an ungodly roar of smoke and flame.

Throwing the rapier towards Harry, he smoothly transfigured it into a bundle of ballista quarrels and added a powerful banishing charm, only for a blast of white-hot Warfire to consume them, racing towards him from Harry's direction. Apparating downwards to behind Harry, Rob unleashed a powerful torrent of electricity in the form of a reduced-power lightning bolt which went crashing past both his opponent and his father who appeared without warning.

That wasn't going to stop them as evermore powerful spells were exchanged, Rob eventually abandoning his usual charms, transfiguration and lower tier combat magics for the most powerful combat spells and a selection of the battle spells he was most confident with.

"HALT!" yelled James, creating a loud steam-horn noise with his wand, momentarily causing a halt in the fight; "Lily told me to come and get you for dinner. She will _hurt_ you if you're late. Her words not mine."

The brothers exchanged a glance before silently disapparating, their father following. Annoying Lily Potter was usually a bad idea. Family though got off lightly, people who weren't in her family and annoyed her, if she was in a merciful mood, ended up dead. Less mercifully, she could make somebody's life miserable enough that they wished they were dead.

* * *

**A day later, October 2000, Caereryr Castle, Ancestral Seat of the House of Potter in the Cambrian Mountains of Wales**

The great hall of the mountain fortress of Caereryr was enshrouded in tense silence. For over a thousand years, dominating a mountain plateau in the Cambrian Mountains, the stone monolith had stood as the home and last bastion of an ancient dynasty, one which was reputed to have the ability in any time or location they chose, to mould the world. They were the Potter Family.

A thousand years of wizardry. Artorius Lucius Castus, Arthur the Potter as he became known was the first of a line which lived on in his descendants. Charlus Potter stood at the head of the table, ramrod straight, a shock of white hair and a neatly-trimmed goatee setting himself apart from the darker hair of those sat with him. Every member of the family over the age of eighteen was seated with him. Hadrian and Adrian, the twin twenty-five year-old sons of James and Lily, their younger offspring Edward and Eliza also sat at the table. Rob Bones was the only of-age offspring of James's girlfriend Amelia, who was sat next to Lily.

Sirius Black, Charlus's adopted son and his wife Artemisia, an Greek witch of Siren blood as well as Remus Lupin and Narcissa Lupin joined them, Draco Black sat next to the slumped form of Harry, who was half-asleep on the table next to his adopted sister, Susan Bones. Of the Black family, there were a few more members, Andromeda and Ted Tonks, as well as their offspring Nymphadora and Saul Tonks.

"At dawn this morning, the terrorist and self-proclaimed dark lord known as 'Voldemort' attacked Hogsmeade village with a force of his footsoldiers, burning maybe half of it before being driven off by Aurors and Aberforth Dumbledore." Charlus stated calmly, his voice, a deep baritone, reverberating about the hall; "However, he publicly threatened this family with slavery and death. We can consider ourselves at war with his faction."

"Bughhh grow-..." mumbled Harry into his arms.

"Somebody waken him up." growled Charlus, prompting Draco to poke Harry in the head with one long finger.

A moment later, Draco was tensed, bolt-upright in his chair with a very sharp parkerized knife at his throat.

"Don't fucking-well try waking me up physically." Harry sighed, flicking the knife down his sleeve before calling for a house elf with a flask of coffee.

"You have something to say?" Charlus asked.

"Yeah, I think." Harry yawned after taking a gulp of coffee; "You say they threatened us? Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Let's change that a bit. Words will never hurt us but bombs and curses may burn your manors down. Identify the terrorists, kill them. Raze their manors to the ground."

"I suspect that the Ministry would have something to say about that." commented Amelia wryly.

"Raze the political structure of the Ministry to the ground then Aunt Amy." Harry shrugged; "Fudge and his ilk are powerless without certain members of society who are quite high on my list of people to have bumped off."

"Take them out... collapse the Ministry in on itself. We could take control and put in some much-needed changes." James admitted; "What about family though?"

"I could go into Hogwarts... register as an exchange student." said Nymphadora Tonks; "Keep an eye on the kids and if necesarry pull them out."

"Agreed." Charlus said immediately; "Are the defences sufficient here?"

"Harry and I have been working on some significant upgrades in offensive defensive power." Adrian replied cryptically; "Let's just say some really big guns and an automated control system."

"If you need anything, tell me." ordered Charlus; "Harry, after dinner tonight, my study, I want a basic plan on an offensive response."

"Tell Voldemort to fuck off. That's fairly offensive. I'm sure I could add more squaddie language." Harry replied, emptying his coffee flask and calling for another.

* * *

**October 2000, Study of Lord Charlus Potter Earl of Caereryr**

"Harry, do come in." sighed Charlus as his eldest grandson walked in and flung himself in an armchair; "I trust you've had a productive day?"

"Yeah, I picked up a mid-level Death Eater in Knockturn Alley trying to broker dark artefacts." Harry replied; "Needless to say that said artefacts are in my 'dangerous shit' vault under the castle."

"Are we going to interrogate the Death Eater?" Charlus asked.

"Too late, drained him for every drop of information that I could before disposing of him." said Harry; "I don't want to go into history, but I have to at this point. As you are aware, the majority of Europe east of the Low Countries is split into a handful of large nations. Italy and Switzerland being part of the Papal Magical States. Poland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and the Czech Republic being the Holy Roman Magical Empire, while Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Turkey make up the Byzantine Magical Empire..."

"Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia all making up the Hungarian Magical Empire, I know, I studied this on my father's knee." Charlus interrupted; "What of it?"

"Unfortunately, everything west of Germany, that being the Low Countries, France, Spain and Portugal are all governed by those who at least sympathise with the cause of Voldemort." Harry frowned; "Our family is threatened by the continued purist governance in Europe who are supplying mercenaries, funds and resources to Voldemort, which must end."

"The Caliphate of Al-Andalus still lives on in the Balearics, Ceuta and Melilla, albeit in exile." Charlus stated; "They have always wanted the Iberian Peninsula back."

"We facilitate that, we gain a significant foothold in Europe. It will require force though." Harry commented; "France's current administration can be toppled with a few discrete assassinations."

"You have someone in mind to take control of the country?" asked Charlus.

"Jean-Sebastian Delacour, he's a friend, an ex-SDECE operative. His daughter competed in the Triwizard Tournament in '94 and won it handily." Harry responded; "We have an ally in Al-Andalus and once the purists are gone, France, we can either take the Low Countries by force or pressure the Holy Roman Emperor into making a move on our behalf."

"That leaves a domestic infestation." Charlus said.

"I've been preparing for just such an event. The old manors are rarely as fortified as this and the AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile can be modified to take out ward stones, drop the defences and let the bombers do the job." replied Harry easily, as if not discussing destroying the established structures of several governments; "Phantom fighter-bombers do the job well."

"I'll prepare you a target list." stated Charlus, working in an old, but familiar environment. During World War II, he'd flown ground-attack Typhoons and Tempests for the Royal Air Force.

"Good. Annotate those who have position on the Wizengamot, I want to take them all out in one fell swoop simply to intimidate the grey houses on the Wizengamot into siding with us." commented Harry; "The power, to them at least, of a family who is willing and able to destroy the most powerful political forces... They almost certainly won't risk going against us, while that power makes us attractive to them. The few who would be driven to oppose us, we destroy."

"Young Draco certainly wouldn't mind casting the final curse on his male progenitor." Charlus noted.

"Grandpa, have you ever seen what a flight of Handley-Page Victor strategic bombers can do to a patch of ground?" Harry asked suddenly; "The bomb bay can carry a Grand Slam earthquake bomb, two Tallboy earthquake bombs or forty-eight one-thousand pound general purpose bombs."

"I once saw the result of a Grand Slam operation." admitted Charlus; "Flying Typhoons over occupied France in '43. Otherwise, no, I haven't."

"Neither have I, but I look forward to finding out." Harry grinned wolfishly; "I believe that Lucius Malfoy still occupies a manor in Tollard Royal in Wiltshire. Within the range of a naval bombardment by one of your warships."

"Indeed." Charlus allowed a similar grin to cross his face; "I had been planning something along the lines of that actually. The upstart Riddle wrote me a letter."

"Pray do tell what he said." Harry requested as his grandfather raked about his desk before finding a piece of tattered parchment that he'd been using as a coaster for mugs of tea.

"I, in all my benevolent mercy, despite all right and reason to destroy the House of Potter, do offer the hand of friendship to you, Charlus Potter, in return for swearing your house to my cause, to be sealed with a marriage between the House of Potter and marked servants of my cause. Signed, Voldemort, Lord of the Dark Keep, Prince of Darkness, Heir of Slytherin and rightful overlord of Great Britain." Charlus read out.

"I believe it's impolite to fail to reply to such an offer." Harry commented, summoning a sheet of parchment and a fountain pen.

In a matter of minutes, Charlus was holding a swiftly-sketched reply, the quite elegant, sweeping writing that Harry had learnt from his mother causing him to squint slightly as he read it out.

"Thomas Riddle, bastard-born of the House of Gaunt, accursed and without faith, I, Lord Charlus Potter, decline your offer, and in return make an offer of my own. My offer is for you to withdraw your forces and ambitions to Ailsa Craig and remain there until you are nothing but a skeleton bleached by seagull excrement. In return, the full forces of the House of Potter, all its vassals and armaments will not be brought to bear on you, your forces and your sympathisers. Yours, Lord Charlus Dunstan Potter, Earl of Mindrum and Ravenscroft, Ancestral Praefectus Castrorum of the Sixth Legion, Marcher Lord of Caeryr and sworn brother of the House of Windsor." he stated, projecting his voice with all the power he could muster, even forcing a bit of magic into it.

Harry smirked as his grandfather's voice thundered out, reading the draft reply.

"Tell that to the Wizengamot." said Harry; "And between us, we destroy the purists."

"Take out their homes, ambush them where we can, eventually if we kill enough of them, we'll have effective control over the Wizengamot itself." Charlus commented, pouring himself a glass of whisky; "Do you think Amelia would like to be Minister?"

"I'm fairly certain she'd hate it." Harry replied; "But it doesn't mean that with effective assistants she wouldn't do a good job."

"Good. Maybe it's time to remind the world that we don't take thinly-veiled threats easily." the elder of the two men said; "How long have you got off-duty?"

"A month." Harry replied; "But that's after injury time expires. Got cut up a bit in Sierra Leone and am still officially on medical leave. If you need any longer I'll have to talk to the CO."

"If we move fast, we can destroy the structure of the purist movement in Britain within a fortnight." Charlus stated; "I'm sure Adrian wouldn't mind dealing with France, I believe his demonology studies are good enough that he can summon phantom wraiths and perform assassinations with them."

"Whereas I can summon F-4 Phantoms and blow stuff up with them." Harry smirked.

"Indeed." replied Charlus, raising a glass to Harry, who'd poured his own; "Fire and blood."

"Fire and blood."


	41. 2-Scorn my family once, never again

**Dispersal Delta, RNAS Dale, Wales, before dawn on the morning of Operation Firestorm, November 2000**

Harry Potter slumped into a battered armchair, clutching two thermos flasks of coffee. After a few sips from the first of them, he fired up the computer which was on standby. It quickly awoke to a screen made up of a patchwork of squares, each showing a person sat facing the camera.

"_Glad you were able to join us._" stated Charlus Potter sarcastically; "_I thought the video call was supposed to start a quarter of an hour before now?_"

"Needed coffee." grumbled Harry.

"_Operational plan updated, our allies in Gringotts have issued a summons to the Crabbe and Goyle families to arrive at zero-eight hundred. Due to the new wards Aunt Amy pushed through the Wizengamot, the only way to arrive in the alley is at the Leakey Cauldron._" Adrian explained; "_Nym __and Rob will ambush them between the pub and bank, though I've left the details to them. I've bagsied the Mulciber Manor and prepared the summoning for a particularly nasty demon._"

"I've got a strike force of some forty aircraft spread around Britain. Six Handley-Page Victors, nine Mirage IVs and twenty-four FG.1 Phantoms." Harry added; "Three of the Victors are loaded with Grand Slam bombs, the other three with the load of forty-eight one-thousand pound bombs. Jean-Sebastian Delacour secured me the use of nine Mirage IV strategic strike bombers to go with my Phantoms, all loaded with Golf-Bravo-Uniform-One-One Paveway One three-thousand pound demolition bombs."

"_You've got the largest number of targets to take out. Dawn is at zero-seven hundred, and the targets must all be neutralised by zero-nine thirty. Can you do that?_" asked James.

"Without a doubt. The Victors will fly in pairs, accompanied by two FG.1 Phantoms equipped with rockets, a gun-pod and anti-radiation missiles to take out wards. Between them, they have three targets to take out and three secondary targets." Harry said, waving his hand dismissively; "The Mirages and Phantoms will go in packs of three, one Phantom loaded with bombs, one Mirage loaded with bombs and a Phantom equipped with anti-ward weapons and ground-attack weapons. Nine primary targets to destroy, a further nine secondary targets."

"_The secondary targets_?" asked Charlus.

"Other holdings than the main home of our opposition. Safe-houses and suchlike." replied Harry; "Half-an-hour until we start warming up the aircraft. Last night we had one-hundred percent reliability, hopefully no problems will spring up."

"_Finally, it falls to me and the Jean Bart to destroy Malfoy Manor, hopefully killing Lucius and allowing Narcissa, at the direction of Lord Sirius Black to take the Malfoy seat on the Wizengamot._" Charlus stated; "_At ten o'clock, the doors of the Wizengamot chambers will open. The House of Longbottom will have inherited by default the seat of the Houses Crouch and Yaxley as the closest living relatives. The House of Black will have inherited the seats of the Houses Crabbe and Goyle as they have intermarried and Crabbes hold primogeniture and the Blacks are the closest relatives once the Goyles are dead. The same goes for the remaining Rosier._"

"_And not to forget that the House of Black will also inherit the Bullstrode seat._" added Neville Longbottom before Draco Black's wife, Astoria interrupted; _Between us, that's an additional seven seats to our own of Abbott, Bones, Black, Greengrass, Longbottom, Potter._"

"_Also, the Lestranges in Azkaban are going to have an accident._" Amelia reminded her; "_Eight extra seats makes fourteen._"

"_Control of fourteen out of fifty isn't enough._" grumbled Draco.

"The Wizengamot hasn't done anything in decades because it's in a permanent stalemate of purists who want to burn anything and anyone non-magical, neutrals who have no allegiance except continuing the status quo and the 'light' purists who think non-magicals are cuddly monkeys." Harry scowled; "It's something like fifteen seats on each side with the rest being us. We're killing off the entire purist faction. That will make, I believe, seven families completely extinct and us the beneficiaries of another eight, so fourteen out of forty-three."

"_To make up the remainder to take complete control of the Wizengamot will take a number of threats on my part. But it means, instead of twenty-six seats voting, we only need twenty-two voting for us to get a majority._" Charlus explained; "_Of which we have fourteen already, instead of six._"

"Yeah, I studied maths and got an A-grade A-level, it's not hard to work out." Harry muttered; "Today's actions will give us a nasty threat to hold over those who might not vote with us."

"_We could kidnap a few of the remaining seat-holders._" offered Adrian; "_Reduce the number at this meeting, and when it's over, we'll release them, by which time it'll be too late to reverse our actions in this meeting._"

"_Possibly. A vote on the Wizengamot is either for, against or abstention. To get a majority over us, the Wizengamot needs to have fifteen voting against and no abstentions as an abstention disqualifies you from the quorum._" Narcissa, their political expert explained; "_An abstention from a vote is the same, legally, as not being voting at all. If, of the twenty-nine we do not control, none vote for us, but fifteen abstain, we win._"

Their attention was momentarily attracted by a groan from Harry and a pair of slender hands appeared, massaging his shoulders.

"I'm bored of the politics. Leave the destruction to me. Ciao for now." and he hit the off button on the computer.

"A little abrupt, no?" asked a heavily French-accented voice as Harry leaned back into her touch; "Where were we?"

"My bed?" Harry said dryly, turning to face Fleur Delacour, a willowy blonde who had lost none of her legendary elegance and beauty since they'd first met.

* * *

Preparing an F-4K FG.1 Phantom II for flight was a lengthy process. Two engines, thirteen-thousand pounds of fuel, or nearly six tons in a fourteen-ton aircraft. Harry started out with a walk-round of his aircraft, a gloss-black painted one, the markings in blood red making it distinctive from the other camouflaged airframes.

The aircraft was fuelled up with a full internal load as he was checking the control surfaces and making sure the hydraulics weren't leaking. An erk climbed into the cockpit, firing up the Northrop-Grumman AN/APG-76 radar which replaced the older, unreliable Ferranti AN/AWG-11 radar.

Armourers crawled over the aircraft, the centreline pylon was loaded with an SUU-23/A gun pod containing a single six-barrelled M61 Vulcan Gatling gun and twelve-hundred twenty-millimetre shells. Four brand-new AIM-120 C-7 AMRAAM air-to-air radar-guided missiles were raised and locked into depressions in the belly of the fuselage before the armourers moved onto the under-wing pylons.

The underwing pylons quickly had weapons racks placed in position, secured to the aircraft and then loaded. The inboard pylons under each wing were loaded each with two Python-4 missiles and two CRV-7 rocket pods containing nineteen rockets each, making for a total of fifty-six deadly projectiles. Then the outboard pylons, usually used for carrying external fuel tanks, instead carried an AGM-88 High Speed Anti-radiation Missile, modified to target the stones to which wards were tied.

Yellow bands painted around each weapon identified them as live weapons, or 'war shots' Now, the Phantom had teeth, besides the ones painted down the nose, the mouth and eyes of a snarling red-eyed wolf.

Harry, having finished an examination of the aircraft, signed off on the fuel and headed to the briefing room where the crews assembled, having completed their own external checks and armament. It was in briefing that the detailed photographs of their targets, captured by the force's RA-5C Vigilante reconnaissance plane, were to be examined a final time.

It was still well before dawn that the base fell silent, the crews sat in their aircraft on the countdown until start-up. Harry was strapped into the cockpit by his plane's crew captain, the ejector seat armed while his back-seater, an Israeli veteran F-4 WSO called Daniel did the same. The few Israelis who had joined the squadron as mercenaries, given their past with racial hatred, reserved a special kind of loathing for the blood purists, the kind that led to missions like this.

"Intercom check." Harry said over the intercom.

"_Intercom loud and clear._" the Israeli replied.

They fell silent for a few minutes as Harry continued his internal checks until he was finished, sitting back and waiting for the radio call from the tower giving them clearance to start. The cockpit canopies were down and locked, the ejector seats armed and ready and the cockpit access ladders removed, they were ready to start. And then the radio buzzed to life.

"_Pirate flight, Pirate flight, check in._"

"Pirate One, loud and clear." Harry responded.

"Pirate Two, crystal." replied the second Phantom pilot in the flight.

"Pirate Three, volume good." the Frenchman in the cockpit of the Mirage IV that made up the third part of the flight added.

"_Pirate One, say status._"

"Alpha Four Four Plus, with four pods Charlie-Romeo-Victor-Seven and two missiles Alpha-Golf-Mike-Eight-Eight, Fast Tiger Two-Zero." Harry replied. 'Alpha' fit meant that he had no external fuel tanks. The first 'four' meant he had four AMRAAM missiles, the second 'four' meant he had four secondary missiles. Then came the air-to-ground weapons and finally, the call of 'fast tiger two-zero', meaning he had enough fuel to get airborne, stay supersonic at intercept height for twenty minutes and return.

"_Copy, start._"

"Starting." said Harry before switching to intercom; "Time to rock and roll."

He could hear in the background as his flight declared their status, but was concentrated on the aircraft. Engine master switches on and then raised a white-gloved hand, twirling his index finger around in a circle. The Ground Power Unit was plugged in and running. In a matter of seconds, the Rolls-Royce Spey began to whine to life, and he depressed the ignition button. With a howl like an angered bull, it lit. Advancing the throttle, he watched the engine temperature, exhaust temperature and fuel flow gauges.

"_Rear throttle movement good._" called Daniel from the back as Harry ran the engine up to full military power and.

"Roger." Harry responded, the starboard engine reaching good RPM and the air behind the aircraft suddenly being superheated to about two-thousand degrees Celsius. A hundred-and-fifty feet behind the Phantom, the air had cooled enough that anyone stood there would not be boiled alive, but instead swept away by a hundred-mile-an-hour wind.

Harry then made another twirling gesture having set the starter switches to the port engine. In moments, it too howled to life, the gauges fluctuating as the airframe vibrated. Making a throat-cutting gesture, he got the ground crew to power down the GPU, switching on the aircraft's own generators. It took a minute to finish the last checks, then he clenched his hands above his head, signalling to the crew to pull out the chocks.

"Pirate One, request taxi to runway one-one-zero two-nine-zero." Harry radioed.

"_Pirate One, cleared to taxi._"

"Pirate, roger."

Easing off the wheel-brakes, Harry depressed the button for the nose-gear steering, opening the throttle a little to get the aircraft rolling before dancing on the rudder pedals a bit to test the steering. Satisfied it was working, he pressed down on the left rudder pedal, idling the port engine and opening the throttle on the starboard one to make a tighter circle.

"_Pirate Two, requesting taxi as previous._" called his Phantom wingman followed by a call from the Mirage IV; "_Pirate Three, request taxi with Pirate Flight_."

"_Pirates, cleared to follow Pirate One._"

Harry eased the big fighter in a left-hand turn onto the perimeter 'perry' track, watching in his mirror for a moment as a second Phantom and then the sleek form of the Mirage IV joined them. Passing alongside runway one-six-zero three-four-zero, he pulled off the perry track to the arming point. Idling the throttles and putting on the brakes as he reached the end, Harry kept an eye open as the remainder of the flight entered behind him. Armourers swarmed over the aircraft after the pilots signalled that the brakes were on, arming the various weapons.

Having been signalled that he was 'weapons hot', Harry released the brakes and rolled off the arming point, back onto the perry track and then around the south-eastern corner of the airfield onto the runway, facing two-nine-zero degrees, twenty degrees off directly west, Harry pulled to a halt for the final checks. The Mirage held back as it would do its own takeoff roll after the Phantoms were airborne, while Pirate Two eased his own Phantom a little distance back on the starboard side of Harry's fighter.

"Pirate One." Harry radioed, declaring that he was ready, staring in the mirror for a signal from his wingman.

A thumbs up and a call of "_Pirate Two_." told him they were both ready.

"Pirate Flight, takeoff." called Harry.

"_Pirate Flight, takeoff roger._" replied the tower.

The runways at Dale were built in a different era for different aircraft. Fourteen tons of Phantom. Six tons of fuel. Zero-point-six tons of AMRAAM missiles, half a ton of Python missiles, another nought-point-eight tons of AGM-88 HARMs, nought-point-eight tons of SUU-23/A gun-pod and over a ton of CRV-7 rockets and their pods. Nearly twenty-four tons. They had chosen the FG.1 for this base as they were built for carrier operations, with fast-lighting reheat, slow-speed flight flaps and a far more powerful set of engines than the American Phantoms. It could also be slammed down into one of four Rotary Hydraulic Arrestor Gear stretched across the runway with the tail hook down.

Opening the throttles fully, the Speys lit into full afterburner with a sheet of blue flame and a kick to the back. He had four-thousand two-hundred feet and he'd need all of them. The aircraft had already been moving at maximum speed he could safely take around the corner at fifty miles per hour. Making some slight corrections as the big fighter accelerated, squirming viciously, he gently eased the nose up and before he knew it, Harry, Daniel and twenty-four tons of fighter, fuel, fire and destruction were thrown off the runway, over the cliff and over the sea.

Pulling up the undercarriage, Harry caught his breath which he didn't realise he had been holding, easing the Phantom around in a right-hand turn, fairly gently as he couldn't risk losing speed and stalling out. Pirate Two joined him, falling in echelon port as they saw a brief burst of fire as the Mirage IV lit a bundle of Rocket Assisted Takeoff Gear. The RATOG bottles allowed him to get into the air much faster than the two Phantoms and was soon joining them.

Turning on a predetermined course to their target, they levelled out at two-hundred feet, which with the Welsh countryside was well below any civilian or air defence radar. No matter how good they were as flyers, how good their systems and weapons were, he didn't want to have to confront RAF interceptors. Luckily, the nearest RAF interceptor was two-hundred and thirty miles away, which gave them time that if they were alerted to a scramble, the strike force could vanish into the countryside.

"Pirates, bearing zero-four-three, speed six-zero-zero." Harry ordered, pushing the throttles to full non-afterburning power and began accelerating to six-hundred knots. He checked the map in his see-through knee pocket. Notthill Hall was a hundred-and-thirty miles away on the outskirts of Chester. Eleven minutes at current speed.

If the interceptors at Coningsby were scrambled for a subsonic intercept overland, it would take them just ten minutes to reach Chester. Not the best odds, but the Tornado F.3s were notoriously unreliable with their wing-sweep mechanisms and RB199 engines, and if they were working, took time to get into the air.

He had already anticipated the possibility of an intercept, as the Handley-Page Victor flights had filed flight plans for civilian aircraft and wouldn't stand up to deep examination, and they'd deviate from them for the bombing attacks, while the Phantom-Mirage flights would be sticking firmly below the radar.

Anticipation of a possibility had become action. The power lines feeding electricity to several civilian air-radar and air traffic control sites would fail, and it would take about ten minutes for the backup diesel generators to kick in and get sufficient power for them to reboot the systems. Then they'd have to mop up the chaos resulting from ten minutes without air traffic control.

The military air defence radar sites he couldn't risk taking out of action, so the Tornadoes would be scrambling to several diversions. A hacker in his pay was going to hack into the air traffic control and delete or modify the flight plans of several civilian aircraft, prompting an intercept. The final stage of the diversion were five RA-5C Vigilantes and five Mirage IVs, all modified with SNECMA M53 engines. Testing had shown them to easily be able to outrun a Tornado. Their job would be to force a scramble and intercept by Tornadoes and high altitude over the North Sea, away from the majority of the strike force's targets.

"Pirates, make speed six-five-zero." barked Harry, opening up with a burst of afterburner before cutting back, mentally recalculating speed for what was now a hundred-and-twenty miles. Ten minutes, approximately. At eight minutes cruising at six-hundred and fifty knots, or seven-hundred and fifty miles-per-hour, they had covered one-hundred miles. Harry opened up a datalink to the other two aircraft, allowing them to share weapons control. He then set up a second, separate one to contact the family's video conference.

"_All going well?_" asked Charlus.

"Minute and a half out from Notthill Hall. No sign of the RAF. You?" replied Harry quickly, checking his air-search radar after a moment of listening to the silent radio to make sure that the only people on the channel were the three crews.

"_Enjoying a delightful breakfast in the Combat Information Centre of the battleship Jean Bart, moored in Poole Harbour, about to awake the residents rather violently._" Charlus smirked.

"Good." Harry grunted, flicking down the visor for his helmet-mounted display. Tapping away at controls in the cockpit, he projected onto the visor over his right eye the view from a camera attached directly to a powerful marksman's scope aligned with the Phantom's gun-pod; "Good magnified vision for strafing ordnance. Requesting electronic warfare." continued Harry as he used the HOTAS, hands on throttle-and-stick, to adjust the focus.

"_Electronic warfare coming up._" replied Daniel from the back seat, where he'd been scanning the air and ground for interesting radar reports.

One of the screens in front of Harry changed display, lighting up a luminescent green colour. He flicked up his visor as the was no need for the scope yet, choosing instead to survey the electronic warfare imaging. A bar at the side of the display stayed stubbornly green, but if it encountered any magic, it would change to red, the brightness of which corresponded with the strength of the magic.

"Electronic warfare display good." Harry stated; "Transferring data link view from cockpit camera to HUD."

"_Getting it clear here._" replied Charlus; "_Zero-hour minus thirty seconds._"

"Master arm live!" radioed Harry, flicking the big toggle switch to 'arm' from 'safe'. Moved over to the ordnance switches, setting the two AGM-88 HARMs and the SUU-23/A gun-pod live before twisting the knob for the rockets to 'arm', setting the interval between launches to just a tenth of a second and the quantity as four, one from each pod. The aircraft's electronics lit up as the 'brain' sent signals down the nervous system, energising the various weapons.

"_Pirate two, armed._" replied the second Phantom.

"_Pirate three, armed, fuses set._" the Mirage IV pilot responded, the fuses set for his GBU-11 bombs.

"_Report on Electronic Warfare, tally, tally, tally._" called Daniel from the back seat.

"Lock it up." Harry ordered as the screen in front of him refocused, a square and a diamond converging on a building on the green-tinged monitor.

"_Locked._"

"Pirates, weapons hot, go, go, go." barked Harry, setting the trigger to the AGM-88 HARMs. His headset whined as they locked onto Notthill Hall, the magic emanating from the structure and the stones which anchored the enchantments standing out like a sore thumb to the modified seeker head.

Squeezing the trigger, there was a momentary delay and for a moment Harry's heart stopped. A dud missile on the rails was not nice. Then there was a loud thump as the rocket motor lit, boosting the first weapon to twice the speed of sound. A second push on the trigger and his second HARM left the rails, the thirteen foot-long missile leaving shock-cones of fire in its wake.

"_Time on target, thirty seconds._" Daniel reported; "_Twenty. Ten. Five, four, three, two, one, splashdown. Missile two, five, four, three, two, one, splashdown._"

Harry watched the electronic warfare reports on the screen. Suddenly the concentration of magic it had been reporting fell massively, becoming more an area saturation.

"Pirates Two, Three roll in. Two, take lead." Harry ordered.

"_Two, roger._"

"_Three, copy._"

The Mirage and the Phantom had already pushed up after the missiles, a LITENING targeting pod under-slung on Pirate Two's Phantom locked on target and a data link feeding that information to the Mirage.

"_Two, dropping, dropping, dropping._"

There was a veritable rain of bombs as the Phantom released, followed by the Mirage. The one outboard pylon under each wing were carrying a rack with three bombs, had been carrying three bombs each, with another three under the inboard port pylon, two on the inboard starboard pylon with the targeting pod. More could have been carried, but they didn't want to sacrifice the air-to-air missiles which also occupied the same pylons. The Mirage, with no air-to-air weapons had five triple-mount bomb racks, for fifteen weapons.

The impact as viewed from Harry's Phantom, orbiting the target, could only be described as apocolyptic. The fuses were set for a mixture of delays. Some burst in the air before hitting the target. Some detonated on impact. Others ploughed into the earth and blew out the ground from beneath the target. Notthill Hall was utterly destroyed.

"_Strafe request, we have multiple attacks from estate gates. They're firing ineffectually._" called Pirate Two.

"One, roger." Harry grinned, hauling the Phantom around in a six-G turn with the nose below the horizon. Selecting CRV-7, he put the visor down so that the video-feed from the scope and crosshairs was over his right eye. "Daniel, tell me to pull up at one-fifty."

"_Copy one-fifty._" replied the Israeli.

Pushing the Phantom into a shallow dive, Harry opened the flaps and air-brakes to slow himself somewhat as he lined up on the gatehouse to the estate. Beams of green light were being shot at him rapidly from the building. Range was displayed on the visor, ten-thousand feet. He'd close to eight-thousand before loosing his rockets. Nine thousand displayed. At just before eight-thousand, Harry fired. The four rocket pods under his aircraft lit up, as he fired five rockets a second from each pod. In under four seconds they were empty, all seventy-six rockets loosed.

Harry switched to the gun-pod and focused down the scope. He could see every detail of the building. Great neoclassic colonnades, wide, arched windows flashing with spellfire. He pressed down on the trigger, an electronic signal of deadly intent sent to the M61 Vulcan Gatling gun in the SUU-23/A gun pod. It buzzed like a demented chainsaw, four high-explosive-incendiary-armour-piercing and one high-explosive-tracer-armour-piercing shell fired every nought-point-nought-five of a second.

"_Pull up, one-fifty._" the Israeli called and Harry heaved back on the stick; "_Good effect, I say good effect. Target destroyed._"

Harry took a deep breath, levelling the aircraft out and flicking up his visor. Then the radio buzzed to life.

"_Strikers, this is Victor callsign Nelson over Shrewsbury, I am being intercepted by two Royal Air Force Tornadoes._" called a calm voice over the radio; "_We have ordnance on board and have not prosecuted the target, our Phantom is holding station._"

"Pirate Three, RTB. Pirate Two, jettison all non air-to-air stores." Harry ordered. Thankfully, they'd thought of this possibility. All the stores under the aircraft were fitted with Portkeys, and if they were jettisoned, they would simply appear in the hangar at Dale.

Harry set his jettison control to drop the rocket pods and the racks for the AGM-88 HARMs, the Phantom bucking a little as it lost a lot of weight, the stores tumbling away and then vanishing. Pirate Two jettisoned his as Pirate Three peeled away, heading for the countryside for a fast, low-level flight back to Dale.

"Nelson, Pirate flight is on its way." Harry radioed back.

"_Nelson, roger._" acknowledged the Victor pilot.

"_You sure about this, the RAF aren't the bad guys._" said Daniel.

"We'll just shake them up a bit and pull them off the strike force so that they can hit their target." Harry waved off his worries, turning south. "Time to intercept?"

"_Locking them up, distance forty miles._" Daniel responded; "_Five radar contacts. ISAR running... two Victors, one Phantom and two Tornadoes._"

"Four minutes. And already within AMRAAM range. Lock the radar on them and see if they react." said Harry before adding a quick order for his wingman; "Two, drop into the mud and join Nelson flight."

"_Two, roger._" replied the second Phantom, dropping a wing and falling toward the countryside.

"_Their Radar Warning Receivers are going to go bonkers at this._" Daniel said, a hint of mischief in his voice as he locked the fire-control onto the Tornadoes. "_One of them is breaking off the intercept and turning this way._"

"Two, corral the one remaining Tornado away from Nelson flight." Harry snapped.

"_Copied._"

"_We don't have enough fuel for a sustained fight._" warned Daniel.

"I know. We may have to scramble a tanker or divert." Harry acknowledged his comment, but his mind was on the fast-approaching Tornado. Closing speed was fourteen-hundred miles an hour, or just over a minute-and-a-half. The Tornado had an internal gun, Skyflash or AIM-120 AMRAAM radar-guided missiles, AIM-9 Sidewinder or AIM-132 ASRAAM heat-seeking missiles. It had a data link, much like his own, electronic countermeasures, chaff, flares and radar decoys.

It meant he would have to play his strengths and his Phantom's strengths. Acceleration and high-subsonic turn-rate. And pray he wasn't going to get into a furball with an experienced pilot paired with a navigator he worked well with.

Lighting the afterburners of his twin Rolls-Royce Speys, Harry watched the range diminish on the radar, preparing for the merge, where the two aircraft would pass. The Tornado flashed past, a streak of grey in an otherwise grey sky. He just spotted the wing-position, they'd been swept forward, preparing for a turn.

Harry, just as the Phantom was about to go supersonic, pulled back hard, hauling hard on the stick and pushing the throttles wide open. Grabbing short, hard gasps of breath as his vision greyed out and his g-suit crushed his legs, Harry climbed vertically and then pulled inverted.

"_Radar lock lost._" Daniel reported, then suddenly called sharply from their inverted position; "_Tally Tornado, ten o'clock, low._"

Rolling the Phantom out into a shallow dive, the Tornado shifted to two o'clock, turning back towards the path of the merge, apparently unaware of twenty tons of fighter bearing down on it.

"Lock him up." Harry barked.

"_Locking._"

"Switching to guns." said Harry as the Tornado reacted to his Radar Warning Receiver and began to pull a turn to the right.

He'd anticipated this and began to pull lead, the squirming lines and the 'pipper' targeting reticule on the Head Up Display squirming as Harry turned the Phantom to bring the gun to bear. He had no intention of firing unless fired upon, but it was a good exercise and a good distraction.

"Nelson flight, say status."

"_Status, full bomb-load, proceeding to target. Tango-two has broken off to engage Pirate Two._" replied the Victor pilot.

"Good. How long d'you need." Harry asked.

"_Five minutes to hit target. Quarter of an hour to RTB._" Nelson One responded.

"Roger." Harry grinned; "Dan, looks like time to take this fight somewhere else."

"_Entice him to follow us out of the zone?_" grunted the Israeli through the G-force Harry was pulling. They'd better get some good gloating material from the gun camera or he was going to be pissed!

"Exactly. Fuel state is enough that we have enough for maybe twenty-five minutes of manoeuvring and then an RTB unless we go supersonic." Harry stated, rolling out from the turn, executing a hard ninety degree turn and dumping the nose in the countryside.

The Tornado, with radar lock suddenly no longer present, turned to follow them, just to see the blackened exhausts of the Phantom disappearing around a hill. Harry was concentrating with every fibre of his being. The Phantom, clean of almost all stores, was aerodynamically slippery and on full non-afterburning power, going like a bat out of hell. And he was at less than a hundred feet in a valley.

At the end of the valley, another hill rose up, and at the six-hundred knots the Phantom was pushing past, they would hit it awfully soon. Harry drew back on the stick, flying up the face of the hill, rolling inverted and keeping the stick back as he descended the far side, rolling out onto the starboard wing-tip and pulling a high-G turn around another hillside, a quick burst of afterburner replacing any speed he'd bled off.

"Bite?" Harry asked.

"_Affirmative, they've taken the bait._" Daniel replied; "_They're really packing on the boost to catch up_."

Smirking, Harry tipped the Phantoms nose down, following the terrain which was being mapped by a line on his HUD. Like throwing a wheel of cheese down the hill, the Phantom gathered more speed. The Tornado's Turbo-Union RB199 turbofans burnt fourteen-hundred pounds of fuel a minute at full afterburner. The Phantom's two Rolls-Royce Speys at full afterburner burnt thirteen-hundred pounds of fuel a minute and produced four-thousand pounds more thrust per engine.

Harry knew if he could use the terrain to keep his speed up and force the Tornado into lighting his afterburner frequently, he could force him to return to base. The merge had convinced him he wasn't fighting an experienced crew, or at least the pilot wasn't.

"_Armada scrambling._" another radio call came over the secure line from Dale. Armada flight was two combat-loaded Phantoms and a pair loaded as fast air-to-air tankers, but still packing enough firepower to make any attempt to interrupt the supply of fuel a short but distinctly painful event; "_Time on target fifteen minutes._"

"Roger."

It would be longer as Harry was pulling the Tornado away from the Victors of Nelson flight, away from the scrambled Phantoms.

* * *

Flying Officer Frank Cole was flying his very first operational scramble. He'd been in the Battle Flight aircrew rooms next to the QRA sheds at RAF Leuchars for twenty hours when the alarm had first sounded. Four crews were kept on 'Q', twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Two aircraft were kept on readiness with two more to take their place if a scramble took place or if an aircraft became unserviceable, or 'went tech'.

The alarm sounded and two crews raced for their aircraft. He didn't know what was happening in the air, and then, ten minutes later, just as the two replacement Tornadoes were in place the alarm had sounded. His back-seater, a Squadron Leader by rank had stayed perfectly calm, almost bored, as this was a duty he'd been doing for nearly thirty years. Cole, not so. It was his very first time on 'Q', having spent two years going through officer training and the Central Flying School at RAF Cranwell, prior to a posting to the Tornado F.3 OCU at Coningsby. He had arrived on-station at Leuchars and 111 Squadron, the 'tremblers' only two months before.

When the scramble went off a second time, Cole was in the cockpit and taxiing out of the Q-shed in less than five minutes, impressive for a first-time. Heading out over the North Sea, his back-seater and the other interceptor pilot had been cursing fluently with some quiet impressive expletives that he'd made note of, as their opponent was playing cat and mouse with them, but it was never clear who was cat and who was mouse.

The Tornadoes were flying at their service ceiling, with the aircraft they was chasing never coming into visual range, frequently forcing them to head supersonic to not loose radar contact. The radar contacts also stayed stubbornly above their altitude of fifty-thousand feet, sometimes climbing to as much as twenty-thousand feet above them.

Then the diversion from the scramble, directed, without the support of a tanker, south-east down the North Sea, making landfall near Berwick-upon-Tweed and down half the length of Britain to Shrewsbury on the Anglo-Welsh border. The first part of the intercept had been textbook, with his back-seater feeding him a perfect arithmetic for calculating the times to turn and speeds, bringing them out just behind a formation of three aircraft, none of which should have been flying.

The McDonnell-Douglas F-4K FG.1 Phantom II had last flown in the dawn of 1990, and the Handley-Page Victors just three years later. Whoever was behind this had their claws deep into the Ministry of Defence's disposal structure. Just as they were contemplating that and the fact that they were being completely ignored by the formation, the radar warning receiver in Cole's aircraft blared its alert and he'd been dispatched by his flight leader to chase down the radar which had been identified as an air-combat radar.

What he'd encountered befuddled his exhausted mind. Twenty-one hours awake, strapped to the most uncomfortable chair in the world with the equivalent of a small bomb underneath it and Cole was confronted with another Phantom, not laden with air-to-ground ordnance but instead, a highly lethal payload of air-to-air weapons that they'd just seen a flash of as the jet passed them on the merge.

"_He's pulling lead!_" yelled his frantic navigator, who with fifteen-hundred hours on Phantoms probably knew what his opponent was doing; "_Nose down, don't let him get that gun on us or we're going to get reduced to the consistency of cream cheese in nought-point-not-very many seconds!_"

Nose down? Cream cheese? Why would he... of course, the Phantom stuttered Cole's stalling brain. Dragging the stick over and back, his suddenly lethargic muscles strained against the straps and the ever-multiplying force of gravity. Lighting the afterburners to keep the energy up, he turned with the Phantom which was still descending irrevocably towards them. Looking up out of the cockpit of the nearly-inverted Tornado, he stared up, flicked his eyes back to the instruments, then stared up again.

"_Wake up kid! He's broken off and headed bearing zero-three-three, speed six-zero-zero, height one-five-zero._" barked the navigator; "_Come on, you can't sleep with him on your arse!_"

Cole silently half-rolled the Tornado and pulled back, dragging it in the opposite direction to the turn he had been holding and lit the afterburners to hunt down the fast-retreating Phantom. Suddenly as he dropped down into the mud, his senses became hyper-aware. Every tree, every rock, every hill seemed to lurch towards the Tornado. He'd only flown a handful of low-level missions, all in the Machynlleth Loop, and all but two in the BAE Systems Hawk or the Shorts Tucano. The Phantom pilot was easily handling the terrain, nearly dancing the big fighter through the valleys, every turn, dive and climb carefully calculated. Cole was barely hanging onto the rapidly-departing tail of the F-4.

"_Fuel state is low. Luckily we're following him on-course for a diversion to Linton-on-Ouse._" Cole's navigator interrupted his concentration momentarily; "_Ten minutes. Then we have to disengage._"

"Where are the bloody tankers! I thought we'd called for one half-an-hour ago." growled Cole.

"_Air defence, this is Norseman Two, requesting tanker status._" called his navigator on the air defence radio channel.

"_Norseman Two, sorry, all serviceable tankers are airborne, they were sent to assist the interceptors but unidentified aircraft intercepted them and are shadowing them._" air defence replied; "_All aircraft are being brought to alert status and none can be spared to buddy-buddy tanker._"

"_Whose fucking airspace is this!?_" demanded the irate navigator.

"_I wish we knew_." was the sober response.

There was no backup coming and no fuel coming.

* * *

Harry grinned as he checked the map in his clear knee-pocket. They were approaching the Peak District at _just _subsonic speeds, any faster and a loud bang would be shattering every window within twenty miles. The spectacular landscape unfolding in front of him, through the HUD, looked like a playground.

Ten minutes of flying had been spent simply observing his pursuer, getting a feel for his flying style and skill. Harry was moderately impressed with the doggedness of the Tornado crew, but they were distinctly reactive. The pilot wasn't pre-empting any of Harry's manoeuvres, and his flying seemed... sluggish.

As the Phantom's manoeuvres became less about testing his opponent and became more violent, faster and riskier, Harry sought to force the Tornado to disengage. A sensible pilot would do so soon, as the Phantom was reducing height, pulling closer to Mach speeds and trying to force the Tornado into overshooting a turn or over-stressing the airframe trying to follow. Israel's massive upgrade package had lightened the Phantom somewhat, packed it full of modern avionics, weapons systems, countermeasures and crucially, increased manoeuvrability due to the addition of leading-edge slats and strakes on the fuselage.

"_Armada, rolling in. Pirate, you can disengage._" the radio buzzed.

* * *

Cole was sweating and swearing furiously behind the controls. He'd thought the Phantom pilot was on equal terms with him and was just getting the hang of the pursuit, then suddenly, something had changed and the aircraft was suddenly being flown extremely aggressively. It was constantly keeping him guessing as to its next move, twitching one way then another, pulling high-G lateral turns that he was having to push seven-G to follow.

"_Haul off, fuel state minimal._" ordered his navigator before cursing; "_Jesus fecking Christ!_"

The gloss-black Phantom with its distinctive blood-red markings had peeled away, climbing on afterburner as another pair of the fighters dropped in behind him, this time they were camouflaged, but the white of missiles stood out as starkly as they had on the black Phantom.

"We've only got enough fuel for one turn, and no afterburner." Cole stated calmly; "Pray to whoever you believe in that they don't open fire."

Levelling out, he pointed the Tornado at Linton-on-Ouse and muttered a brief prayer as, a minute later, the black Phantom returned, with two more camouflaged aircraft in tow.

* * *

Harry disengaged, rolling out of a turn and lightning the afterburners while hauling back on the stick. A burst of blue flame from the exhausts and he throttled back, cruising to a camouflaged Phantom as it released a hose-and-drogue from a pod under the centreline. With a typically loud bang, the refuelling probe extended out of the black Phantom's starboard side.

Easing the Phantom up, gently walking the throttles, he executed the maneuver known colloquially as 'a running fuck at a rolling doughnut', driving the probe into the basket.

"_Transferring._" called the Phantom tanker.

"Roger. Five thousand pounds please." Harry replied. That was about the amount that the external drop-tank under each wing carried in total.

"_Five thousand, copy._"

A minute later, he throttled back slowly, disengaging from the drogue and closing the refuelling probe before flicking the Phantom over at a hundred-and-twenty degree angle and pulled back on the stick, descending to the level of the Tornado, followed by the tanker and the backup tanker. The Tornado showed no response to their sudden presence except a nervous waggle of the wings.

"_He's not turning to engage. Is he out of fuel?_" asked Daniel.

"We're on a direct course for RAF Much-Suffering-in-the-Marsh – that is RAF Linton-on-Ouse." Harry commented; "Armada, Pirate Two, haul off and RTB."

"_Armada Flight, break, break, break._" called Armada One.

One by one, the camouflaged Phantoms pulled hard turns off to port, leaving just Harry, who remained behind and above the Tornado who had slowed to five-hundred knots. Holding there until he had a visual on the runway of Linton-on-Ouse, Harry selected flares on his countermeasures panel and lit the afterburners, blasting ahead of the Tornado and, with a chattering sound, released a barrage of flares in the wake of his aircraft before performing a vertical break with a waggle of his wings.

No hard feelings.

Time to return to base. If all had gone well, all aircraft would recover safely, with one-hundred percent of primary targets destroyed. If not, then the Potter family might be moving overseas.

* * *

Charlus Potter's launch grumbled to a halt on the gravel of the shore of the Dale Peninsula, the battleship Jean Bart a faint, ghostly shadow in the haze, almost a _phantom. _Mentally smacking himself for the bad pun as one of the aircraft that had inspired the mental comment roared overhead, its mission far beyond the horizon or the ghostly warship.

Dropping onto the gravel with Draco Black, one of his huge family, both by blood and adopted, Charlus silently strode towards the steps carved into the cliff face. At the top of the stairs, a Land Rover awaited them with a driver, who quickly ferried them to the operations room on the far side of the airfield.

Harry, clad still in his flying suit, although he'd done away with the g-suit, immersion suit and lifejacket, was poring over a map of Continental Europe with Jean-Sebastian Delacour and his daughter, Fleur.

Stood easily six-feet, though not bulky, Jean-Sebastian Delacour provided more than just a father figure for his beautiful daughters. He was distinctly the father of Fleur and Gabrielle, with the same easy elegance. Greying hair was swept left and right down to his shoulders, a distinct sense of authority lent to him by the camouflaged clothes with the gold anchor surrounded by two diamond of scarlet on a brown diamond patch sewn on the shoulder and five gold bars on a rank slide on his chest.

"Grandpa!" Harry grinned as Charlus walked in; "Glad you're here, how did things go?"

"I won't bother with the detail, but Amelia's Minister now, Fudge is lingering in a holding cell and the Aurors are being purged of purists prior to a top-down purge of the entire Ministry." Charlus said swiftly; "She was furious when she got the slightest hint of how dirty the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but there are a good number of loyalists, and Dumbledore's bunch didn't oppose us for the most-part."

"Good. I expect to have to deal with the non-magical side of things fairly soon as we didn't get away with it unnoticed." Harry nodded; "The positive side is that we didn't lose any aircraft or crews, and neither did the RAF. Next move is France, Jean-Sebastian and Fleur have been most helpful."

Jean-Sebastian Delacour met Charlus with a firm handshake as the two men surveyed each-other. The Frenchman was awfully similar to the Englishman. Jean-Sebastian was a wizard of an old noble family, he'd had no time for politics and power-plays, and had enlisted in the French Army straight out of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, joining the 1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment aged sixteen in 1955, retiring twenty-one years later and settling down to start a family.

Charlus Andrew Potter was also a wizard of an old noble family with a heritage stretching far into the mists of the Roman Empire and its occupation of the British Isles. Joining the Royal Air Force shortly before the Second World War, he'd reached a high field rank by dint of surviving. His wasn't the glamorous and often all-too-short life of the fighter pilot, but instead flying ground-attack missions, throwing himself into the jaws of hell and trusting his skills, his pilots, trusting in the sturdiness Hawker Hurricane, the murderous armament of the Bristol Beaufighter, the speed and lethality of the de Havilland Mosquito, the sheer power of the engine and weapons of the Hawker Typhoon and finally, the ferocious Hawker Tempest. Retirement for him came in 1950, and fatherhood five years later.

"How did your mission go?" Charlus asked Harry.

"Pretty much textbook. Took out the wards with HARMs, then smooshed Notthill Manor all over Cheshire with bombs. There was ineffectual response from a gatehouse, spellfire. I unloaded my rocket pods into the gatehouse and fired a long burst of twenty-mil into it." Harry replied.

Charlus winced. Flashbacks of Occupied Europe came to him. His Typhoon thrown side to side as the dreaded 2cm Flakvierling ripped apart the air as he raced toward Rheine-Hopsten Air Base on a flak-suppression mission for the fast Tempests to go in and take out Axis jets. A flak post blasted apart, smoke, shrapnel and bodies thrown everywhere with a barrage of eight rockets. The deck of a German armed merchant cruiser as it was swept with twenty-millimetre shells. He wasn't blind to the death that he had ordered when giving Harry the go-ahead on the mission.

Each rocket pod the Phantoms carried had more than twice as many rockets in it as his Hurricanes, Beaufighters, Mosquitoes Typhoons and Tempests had carried. Its twenty-millimetre Gatling gun had more than twice as many shells than one Typhoon carried, and fired them twice as fast with a twenty-five percent increase in velocity.

"I had the civilian air traffic control sabotaged, and diverted interceptors with feints into British airspace by A-5 Vigilantes and Mirage IVs. In a worst-case scenario, they'd have deployed their own anti-radiation missiles to take out all useful radar sites in Britain." Harry grimaced; "Luckily it didn't come to that, the two interceptors who interfered in a raid were swiftly herded away and eventually forced to abandon their missions. All the tankers scrambled to support the RAF interceptors were intercepted by our Phantoms and forced to hold off until our operation was complete."

"Let me get this right... you shut down the UK's civilian air traffic control. You diverted the interceptors, hijacked the tankers _and _were planning how to take out the entire radar system for these isles..." Charlus said slowly before bursting out laughing.

"Ze next step is a strike to completely neutralise the continental navies." Fleur interrupted; "Luckily for us, the 'as been no development in naval warfare in the magical world since, I think you call it 'the age of sail'. No 'eavy resistance eez expected."

"Indeed." said Jean-Sebastian with a sharp nod; "Den Helder. Antwerp. Zeebrugge. Le-Touquet. Le Havre. Cherbourg. Brest. Saint-Nazaire. The Gironde Estuary. Arcachon. These are the locations that the Netherlands, Belgium and France have their magical navies based. The most modern equipment they have are ironclad enchanted sailing ships."

Charlus made a noise of disgust.

"RA-5C Vigilante reconnaissance aircraft are being prepared along with Mirage IVR reconnaissance aircraft and RF-4E Phantoms supplied by Israel." Harry stated; "We know the bases, but fresh reconnaissance is needed within hours of any attack. I have only worked out the barest details of what we're going to throw at them. The Phantoms, when we decide to push on with the mission, will be loaded with AGM-123 Skipper II anti-ship missiles. I reckon each aircraft can carry six, plus Charlie Fit external tanks, one under each wing, a LITENING target designator, four close-range air-to-air missiles and four long-range air-to-air missiles."

"What sort of damage would that inflict?" Charlus asked.

"Imagine, if you will, a weapon weighing the same as a very light sports car, hitting a target a little short of the speed of sound, concentrating all the force on one spot unlike a car crash. And then two-hundred kilograms of high explosive detonating." Jean-Sebastian explained.

"We've also got five F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bombers which can carry a up to about eight Mark Forty-Four torpedoes which I'm going to add to the strike package." added Harry; "They're a rather nasty kind made by the South-Africans. It'll blow through a half-inch steel skin, a five-foot deep water-filled shock-absorbing double hull and then blow through an inch-and-a-half of steel armour."

Charlus had one thing to say.

"Have you got a two seater?"

"We'll see." Harry replied, not discounting what his grandfather was hinting.


	42. Magus Chapter 1

**November 1st 1976, Little Whinging, Surrey, England**

"Good luck Harry Potter." whispered Albus Dumbledore as he turned to depart.

"No good will come of your actions." growled a voice from the shadows cast by moon behind the uniform houses of Privet Drive. Stepping out of the darkness, using an immense double-headed battleaxe as a walking stick, a figure emerged. With dirty dark blond hair, a long beard and moustache braided and a surcoat of dark-red leather over chainmail, he was an impressive sight.

Dumbledore slewed round, a burst of red springing from the wand that had appeared in his hand. The figure swatted it away with an irritable swing of the battleaxe.

"Now boy, lower your wand unless you want a fight." the approaching man rumbled.

"Who in Merlin's name are you?!" demanded Dumbledore.

"Cedric, sworn servant of the Potter family. And you're standing between me and my charge." Cedric stated, hefting his axe so the haft rested on his shoulder, lifting his cloak enough to reveal a Saxon longsword slung at his side; "I'd advise you to step aside boy."

"I cannot allow you to take Harry from his blood family." Dumbledore replied serenely, even as Cedric stepped towards him.

"He isn't with his blood family you utter fool! You've left him lying like a parcel on the doorstep of a house." snapped Cedric; "If you believe you have his best interests then I believe I know the name of a good mental asylum, or a good treestump that I could use to relieve you of your head. Leaving him in the night with a blanket for warmth and nought to protect him from the elements and the foxes. Either a fool or you want him gone, like his mother and father, who you promised to protect."

He began advancing forward when, only feet from Dumbledore placed his wand inches from his forehead.

"Don't, boy." Cedric snarled angrily.

"I will place Harry within the house where he is warm, out of the rain and away from the vermin, and that should satisfy you. But you can go no further, and I would rather you don't question me." Dumbledore warned; "There is no place safer for him, the protection his mother's sacrifice-"

Cedric had had more than enough of Dumbledore blathering on and on. He was convinced that nobody could be so blatantly stupid _and_ evil at the same time. He slammed the haft of the axe into the wizard's solar plexus before striking him on the back of the head with a mail-clad fist, instantly knocking him unconscious. Walking up to the front of the house, he swept the sleeping child up and vanished in a cloud of smoke.

* * *

**1990, Rabi Castle, Czechoslovakia**

Harry stood opposite his opponent in the long gallery of Rabi Castle. He'd acquired it within the last year as part of a payment for his assistance in 'preventing' the actions of some radical ultra-communists during the revolution. Prevention was a nice way of saying that they were lying in a shallow grave somewhere in the country.

With a sudden roar, the man flung himself at Harry, a sword swiftly drawn from a sheath at his side. Harry had grown well. At nearly fifteen, he had been educated by the English standard to A-levels, and his magical skills in combat had yet to meet a match. What he was most fearsome with was the longsword slung from his belt.

The two met with a clash, Harry parrying above his head with both hands on the grip of the bastard sword, taking one off and curling it into a fist, driving it into the stomach of his attacker who lurched back, gasping for breath. Harry attacked, slashing in from his right, which was swiftly parried by his opponent half-handing his sword vertically at his side. The swords rang as the deadly dance accelerated.

Leaping over a slice aimed at his knees, Harry brought his sword down at his opponent's head, who stepped aside, smashing away the sword with a vicious point-down inverted parry before lunging at the adolescent. Harry placed his own sword diagonally across his body from his right shoulder to his left hip and stepped into the lunge, steel rasping on steel as he forced the attacker's blade away from him. He spun around, slamming his elbow into his opponent's chin before they met in another attack.

With lightning-fast movements, each carefully controlled, full of measured aggression, Harry dealt blow after blow, forcing his opponent backwards down the long gallery. Lifting one leg over an attempt to sweep his feet from under him, he lunged forward, the point of his sword seeking a target. The lunge was swiftly parried, but in a moment, his sword was no longer there. The feint was fast, followed by an envelopment and a violent twist. His opponent's longsword went skittering across the floor before coming to rest at the foot of a piano.

Harry's breathing deepened and became more rapid as he relaxed after the furious fight, sword point just inches from Cedric's neck. Their momentary freeze was interrupted by clapping. Harry swung around to see his butler, Victor Dubose, stood in his coat and tails next to one of the ornate sofas where two men, one a bearlike man of great stature, dressed in the scarlet and the black of the Vatican. The other wore a Van Dyke beard, a long, thin face and clad in a uniform of black riding boots, dark blue trousers and a dark-green velvet jacket adorned with small pieces of gold braid.

"Well done gentlemen." Victor stated, his upper-crust southern English accent redolent of his past as a manager at the Savoy in London, where Harry had met him and employed him; "If you don't wind me interrupting..?"

"Not at all. We had just finished." grunted Cedric, walking over to where his sword lay, picking it up and pushing it home into the sheath at his side; "The armoury after supper, Harry." he added before sweeping off.

"Gentlemen." Harry greeted his visitors, walking over as he sheathed his sword.

"Sir, Cardinal Mage Nicholas Graf von Schwartz," Victor introduced the first, who rose and bowed slightly to Harry, who returned it; "and the Holy Roman Magical Empire's Ambassador of the Interior, Ernst Dahl." the second man greeted him with a slightly deeper bow, being of lower social rank than the Cardinal Mage. "Gentlemen, Hadrian Potter, heir and de facto head of the British noble House of Potter

"Shall we take this to my study?" Harry asked after the formalities had been observed.

"That would indeed be wise." replied von Schwartz.

Turning away, Harry gestured for them to follow him down the long gallery and through a studded door into a comfortable sitting room and through a further door to his study. A huge fireplace occupied most of one wall, big enough to burn a good tree trunk, though only the embers of the previous night's fire remained. The stone floor was, mostly, covered by a Persian rug and a wide, leather-topped captain's desk, on which Harry perched himself, his guests occupying

"May I offer you drinks?" Harry asked.

"No thank you." declined von Schwartz.

"Very well, business." stated Harry.

"Indeed. I assume from your lack of questions, you are aware of who the Mages are?" asked the Cardinal Mage.

"I do indeed. Occupiers of the Palazzo di Magia in the Vatican, international peacekeepers, and, when necessary, soldiers." Harry recited; "Also ruling mainland Italy, Sardinia, Sicily and Switzerland under the title 'Papal State of'."

"Good, that makes things a lot easier." nodded von Schwartz approvingly; "Since the downfall of the non-magical Soviet Union, we've come across evidence of rogue wizards using magic to experiment on humans... not a lot of evidence, but enough to require action. Unfortunately, there aren't many in our ranks who could easily blend into Russia and Eastern Europe while being comfortable in the non-magical world."

"You wish for me to work on your behalf..." Harry said, putting on a 'thinking' tone of voice and running a hand down his chin; "I am tempted. Though I am aware that the Mages do not simply walk into other nations and hunt down those they don't like. There must be some form of jurisdiction, and the declaration thereof."

Schwartz produced a small pendant and threw it to Harry, who deftly caught it.

"The pendant of a mage. By it, any action made is in the name of our organization. This one is conjured and will return to nothingness in sixty days." he stated; "Come to Rome when sixty days are up and you will stand before a council of Cardinal Mages. But beware, should you use the pendant for ill, then it will destroy itself, and you. Should you survive, we will know and will end you."

"And the Ambassador?" Harry asked of the still-silent man.

"While you live on the non-magical side of the curtain of this world, Czechoslovakia, as with the rest of what was once the Austro-Hungarian Empire is part of the Holy Roman Magical Empire." stated the Ambassador; "As an undoubtedly skilled and powerful wizard with a burgeoning reputation, I felt it my duty to get the measure of you."

"And now?"

"I am intrigued. A wizard of some reputation in his home nation, the so-called 'Boy-Who-Lived' and the 'Boy-Who-Vanished'... a child born to powerful parents, at ease wearing non-magical clothes." said Dahl, nodding to the jeans and long-sleeved t-shirt Harry was wearing under dragon skin bracers, vambraces and vest, before nodding to the sword at his side; "Or wielding non-magical weapons and working with the non-magical government."

"It's always good to keep people intrigued..." Harry chuckled.


	43. Magus Chapter 2

**August 1990, Kiev, Ukraine**

Grigori Madvoda looked up from the kitchen table of his grimy Kiev flat as someone rapped on the door.

"Eto razblokirovan!" he yelled. The door wasn't locked.

"Dubroye utro, Comrade Madvoda. Dushi dvadtsati detey vas zhudet!" Harry barked as he strode into the kitchen; "Good morning Comrade Madvoda. The souls of twenty children await you!"

Madvoda had heard that a number of his ex-KGB colleagues had been dying in recent times. He'd simply dismissed it as suicides and the odd murder due to the fall of their masters who would once have protected them. Now he wasn't sure. Diving out of his seat, he leapt over the table and closed the distance with the man who had just entered, no older than some of the girls who had been 'enrolled' on his program.

Seizing the gunman's arm as he raised a pistol, they grappled for a moment, and then tried to twist the weapon from his grip. And then it was all over. The muzzle rested under his chin, and his own finger was on the trigger, trying to stop his opponent's finger tightening on it.

Harry released the stolen Makarov pistol and left it in the man's hands as he slumped to the floor, blood pooling around him. He'd made sure to wear disposable latex gloves and left no prints on the pistol, the magazine or the bullets themselves. He supposedly had jurisdiction to hunt down the perpetrators of the magical experimentation of the Soviet Union, but it was easier that as few as possible were blatantly murdered.

Satisfied, he nodded to the body and turned around, strolling out. He had an International Portkey to catch.

* * *

Natasha Romanova moved slowly around the corner of the Kiev penthouse, her favoured Tokarev TT33 carefully extended in front of her. Old the weapon may have been, but it was reliable, fairly powerful, the ammunition easily acquired and easily concealed. Slowly, she lowered the weapon, seeing the same scene she'd encountered many times in the last month.

Not that she wasn't satisfied, but these were _her_ targets and every time she caught up with one, she was just days behind someone else with lethal mission. Every time, that person had eliminated her target.

"What do you think?" asked Katala Bokori, her former KGB partner-in-training and now KGB escapee.

"That we get out of here before the police arrive." Natasha said sharply, holstering her pistol.

Quickly moving back to their hotel to plan, Katala found a map and began plotting the locations of each of the deaths. A red marker rested on most of the major cities in what had been the Warsaw Pact.

"Do you think he's working east?" she asked, pulling her blonde hair back into a loose ponytail.

"Not exactly." Natasha frowned, marking a line between each kill. "The person started here, as far as we know. Prague. North to Leipzig. Three in Magdeburg. Rostock. Then finally two in Berlin before moving back to Czechoslovakia. Brno, Bratislava, Kosice. Then he is moving east. We should move a few jumps ahead."

"Dmitri Vilistenya lives in Volgograd, and he's on _the_ list." commented Katala.

"The question is, will he stay in the former Soviet nations or go as far as Russia itself?" Natasha commented, tapping the end of the pen against her temple, running a hand through her fire-coloured hair; "It's a gamble. He might not show and in the time we're waiting for him, he goes in a completely different direction."

"The only ex-KGB employees who have been dying like flies recently have been from our... program." Katala commented; "As long as this person lives, I believe they will keep hunting."

"We'll go to Volgograd." agreed Natasha.

It wasn't much of a pattern, but it was better than nothing. After all, they'd encountered what the other killer had left in his trail from Germany to here. A little further wouldn't be too difficult and even if it came down to it, a little luck would have them coincide with the shooter, then Natasha and Katala could find out exactly why he was killing _their _targets.

* * *

Jabbing the enchanted pocket-knife Cedric had bought him for his sixth birthday into the lock, Harry pushed the door open, another Makarov already levelled. With deadly intent, he cleared the apartment room-by-room until he came upon the sitting room where he could see the side of a man's head sat in an armchair facing a television which was on, producing a background noise. Gently easing open the door, as soon as he had room, Harry fired a single shot, straight into the side of the man's head. He would need to move the expended cartridge, but it wouldn't be hard to set up another suicide.

That was when he felt the cold metal of a gun-barrel pressed against his temple.

"English?" she asked, glancing over the handsome face, marred by a single jagged scar down one side of it, moving down to his body where it was easy to see that, under his long dark-blue duster jacket and neatly pressed trousers, there were enough bulges to warn her of the probability of him having more weapons than his pistol.

"Yes." Harry replied, deciding that this wasn't the moment to bandy words or taunts.

"Lower the weapon please." she requested.

Harry was all too-pleased to do this, releasing his left hand from supporting the butt of the Makarov. Slowly lowering the gun in his right hand, he was surprised as there were several footsteps from another direction and a small hand twisted the pistol from his loose turned, twisting the arm holding the pistol at his head so the woman couldn't fire it, and then delivered a savage blow to the woman's side with his elbow.

To her credit, she only flinched a bit when most would be screaming on the floor, but it was enough for him cross the room and pull the other girl into his arms, her back to him and a knife held in his left hand against her chest. There was a loud click as he produced a Webley revolver and pulled back the hammer, putting the redhead in his sights, while the blonde froze, his knife pressed against her chest.

The young woman opposite was what the reserved Victor Dubose would call 'aesthetically pleasing' with slightly wavy red hair falling down to her shoulders, pale green eyes and wearing a tight blouse under her leather jacket which left little to the imagination, ditto for her jeans. However, he didn't waver in his aiming the cocked weapon at her.

"Now that we're on equal terms..?" he said smoothly; "Maybe you could inform me who you two are, why you're here and why you didn't shoot me when you had a chance?"

Scowling but realising the Englishman had her friend and her at his mercy, she replied;

"Natasha Romanova, formerly of the KGB, Katala is my former partner. The reason we're here is that you're hunting people we'd really like to kill ourselves. I didn't shoot you since you've not done anything more than irritate us and we want information."

Harry slowly lowered his gun and spun the cylinder so that the hammer fell on a spent cartridge before tucking the large knife away in a sheath under his jacket. The blonde, released, immediately crossed the room to her partner, keeping the commandeered Markarov close.

"Probably a bit of a mistake, but one I'm glad of. Why though are two ex-KGB agents hunting their own..." he said curiously.

"Neither of us were ever members of the KGB by choice." Katala replied, slowly lowering the pistol; "That's why we're after your targets. You never told us who you are, and how you've been finding our targets."

"Harry Potter. I'm cleaning up a group of KGB agents who were suspected of and confirmed to be involved in experimentation on human beings." Harry stated; "I lifted a couple from the streets and interrogated them for information and have been using that to track them down."

Natasha noticed he failed to say who he worked for.

"No, we were both amongst those kidnapped by them, we were forced into KGB training aged four until we were thirteen when the fall of the Soviet Union put an end to it." Natasha said evenly.

"Trained as assassins and spies with no choice. Tortured if we weren't good enough or if we didn't want to do something. If someone escaped, we were all tortured, if someone was found escaping, they were shot." Katala snarled; "We retired and ran before we could be 'retired'."

Harry's hand twitched towards the knife tucked through his belt as he glared at the body;

"Maybe simply killing them is a bit merciful."

"Nyet, I'm not one for school-children philosophy, but going down to their level wouldn't help." Natasha disagreed.

"So, what now?" Harry asked.

"Wouldn't it be easier if we split the hunt Tasha?" asked Katala.

"You have a list of the targets?" asked Natasha.

Harry silently produced a list from his pocket and threw it onto the table between them. Natasha picked up the scrap of paper with the list of names and glanced over it; "Why don't we split the rest of the two-dozen between us, get the job done and I get a bit of satisfaction?"

Harry had been extending his magical senses onto the young woman, receiving some slightly familiar but somewhat different responses, ones he was familiar with from people who had rituals performed on them, yet she had no magic of her own. The same went for the young Hungarian. He didn't want to risk a deep Legilimency scan, but he could work out that these were amongst the operatives that the Russians had used magic to enhance.

"I suppose we could do that." Harry replied, tearing the list in half and giving one half to her; "There's a rather nice cafe in Istanbul, in one of the old sections of Constantinople and Byzantium, meet there in a month as that's where the last target on your half of the list is, I'll give you the address for the cafe, and a transport to wherever you two want to go."

The two adolescent girls conferred for a moment before Natasha announced; "Deal." accepting the address on a slip of paper from him before they all quickly departed in case anyone had heard the gunshot.


	44. Borne from earth to blade in hand

**December 21st, 1976, Malfoy Manor, Tollard Royal, Wiltshire**

Narcissa Malfoy, formerly Black, was quietly rocking her young son to sleep when she heard the door drift open behind her. The party on the Winter Solstice should have still been well in swing, a major part of Lucius' campaign to rehabilitate the Malfoy name and the Malfoy vaults after his slithering out of jail time for his part in the Death Eaters.

"How is he?" Lucius' soft voice enquired.

"Quiet, as life should be now with the dark lord dead." Narcissa replied harshly.

"He's not dead." sighed Lucius, baring his arm and staring at the brand. "I don't know what the Potter boy did..."

"What!" hissed Narcissa; "Now we've got a chance to be a real family for once! And you can't let that maniac's cause go. All we wanted was to stop the muggleborn from forcing their views on us, and to preserve and propagate the Old Ways."

"He's not dead." Lucius insisted. "He'll find a way back, one way or another. And I can't openly act against him. All we can do is enjoy the years of peace we've got."

"What about the Potter boy?" asked Narcissa.

"What about him?" replied Lucius, raising one elegant eyebrow.

"Everything, anything. Gain custody of him. Kill him to clear the way for the dark lord. Train him to kill the dark lord, we all heard that gibbering madman going on about a prophecy, either the boy or him." Narcissa scowled.

"I've already applied for guardianship under your relationship to his grandmother Dorea. It's only a distraction and power-sink really, Dumbledore will block it come what may." Lucius sighed.

"What about illegal methods. Kidnap the boy and have him raised by Dominique de Malfoi in France." suggested Narcissa.

"Tried that, he's under heavy enchantments that are more prison than defence." Lucius shook his head. "We can but wait and see what becomes of the boy."

"There must be some way to exert some influence on Potter." Narcissa quietly laid down her sleeping son before beginning to pace.

Lucius internally frowned at his wife's obsessiveness, and grimaced slightly when a few bits of a puzzle started to fit together quiet nicely. Narcissa had locked herself in the library for a full day-and-a-half when the news of James and Lily Potter's deaths became public. She'd been no maiden when they married and there were rumours involving her, Potter and Evans circulating around Hogwarts.

However that gave him an idea.

"I know we discussed this and agreed to have just Draco, but there's one influence few males can resist. And that's the affections of a woman." Lucius mused.

"Draco raised to lean towards the pureblood-supremacist agenda." Narcissa commented; "A daughter groomed to become concubine, consort or even wife of Harry Potter... raised knowing the Old Ways."

"One problem, she'll be two years younger than young Mr. Potter." Lucius frowned; "If I recall, my French cousin Dominique has a _natural-born _niece he'd rather not have around the chateau... her blood is of good origin, and were we to adopt her, she's a few months older than Mr. Potter..."

"We should visit France and meet..." agreed Narcissa.

"Meet Isabella."

* * *

**Within the ancient walls of a great fortress of a dynasty long forgotten.**

**DAY ONE:**

A figure garbed in chainmail and boiled leathers walked slowly out of the great doors of the castle and walked around the keep, a wind whipping at dirty-blond hair, long and loose, and a fearsome braided beard. A grove of oaks grew, encircled by thirty great standing stones, one for each day of the lunar cycle. He bore before him a sword, keen of edge and sharp as any that came before it. Another five standing stones protected the inner sanctum, joined together with stones on top of them.

"You enter the henge bearing a blade. Name your purpose." demanded a voice, female, soft and musical, from a figure robed in close-fitting forest green robes stood before a low stone altar.

"I, Cedric the Saxon, son of Wulfe, borne out of Germania, offer my fealty to Hadrian, son of James, of the line to which I owe my life in servitude in weregild." the intruder replied formally; "I bring him the blade of his father, scarred in battle and yet to be cleaned of the blood drawn in defence of his family."

A third figure advanced, wearing a black cloak of mourning over the dull gleam of chainmail and a burnished cuirasse.

"The sword of my fallen father, borne from the depths of the earth and made deadly for his hand." the armoured figure accepted the blade; "Carved from mahogany and willow, grown from seed in the earth, lined with the cores of a dragon's heart, fire made flesh, the wands of my parents." he accepted the two carved lengths of wood.

"The warriors fell in battle, now lay their weapons to rest."

The sword gleamed coldly once more as it was swept back, as if to come down and cleave flesh and bone, to turn aside men once more. Then it came down over the wielder's head and crashed against the stone, amazingly remaining whole, if scarred. The stone itself was scarred, chips flying off and a wedge carved into it. A final time the sword was swung again, muscles straining beneath chainmail, and then it shattered.

"Magnus, it is done. Lay the blade to rest. It is time to forge anew."

A smoking bowl of charcoal and incense was brought forward and laid on the altar, into which he placed the wands. They slowly began to glow and flames crackled along the length of of the polished wood. The Saxon retreated from the stone circle as the other two, one male and one female, stripped down to trousers and shirts, taking the magic-infused flames in the bowl from the circle to an area of the inner ward of the castle where they prepared to forge anew.

Bricks stacked and sealed clay formed a great kiln. Charcoal was shovelled in through the open top and then the bowl, alight with magical flames was emptied on top, preparing the kiln. The man took wet clay to a potter's wheel, moulding it over a wooden former, using a piece of slate to scrape the clay into the shape of a pair of pots and lids. With four hours of work gone, they were ready for firing and the kiln burned ever hotter, flames rising out of it as the Saxon manned a set of powerful bellows at the bottom of the kiln.

As both clay pots were ready, they were taken, gripped with iron tongs, and lowered into the harsh heat. The kiln was left to burn for the night.

When sundown came, the shattered shards of the broken sword were laid to rest atop the tomb, in the catacombs of the castle, in which James Potter lay, and carved in the runes of the old tongue was an inscription.

_This sword is unmade until the end of days._

_It will be made whole when James, son of Charlus descend from the halls of the valorous slain._

_To stand beside his father, his mother, his wife, and his son._

_Taking his place, fighting alongside the line of his people, back to the beginning._

_To stand as the sky descends, heralding the end of all._

_And the darkness shall not reign supreme._

That night, the first crescent of a new moon lit the sky.

* * *

**DAY TWO:**

For an hour they waited until the clay pots and their lids were ready. Each piece was lifted out and placed aside to cool. Hours passed and they finally were sheathed in another layer of wet clay. One pot was half-filled with iron ore, one half-filled with iron sand. Broken glass bottle shards and bones were added to each, along with sand to the iron ore pot. Tree barks, leaves, small amounts of rare elements were added. Then, charcoal filled the rest, before the lids were added and clay sealed the pots, now crucibles sealed shut. The charcoal would burn out any oxygen sealed in the crucible in the smelting, while the sand, burnt bone and glass would collect the slag, purifying the iron into steel.

More bricks were added to the kiln, building it up. One of the two crucibles, the one containing iron ore was lowered in. More charcoal was shovelled in, completely covering the pot. The three, working in unison kept the bellows going and sealed the entire kiln, now a furnace, with clay to prevent leakage, and contain the heat. It only vented near the bottom, allowing the heat rising to be contained.

The blacksmiths retired to their beds and the elvish servants took over manning the bellows overnight.

* * *

**DAY THREE:**

Come dawn the next day, they carefully disassembled the top layers of the furnace and lifted out the iron ore crucibles, glowing orange-white. It was taken, to a nearby anvil and then struck again and again until the crucibles broke off and fell apart, leaving the ingot of steel devoid of impurities which formed slag and broke off with the crucible.

The second crucible, left to sit overnight with the iron sand in it, was lowered into the furnace and the bricks and clay once again used to seal the top. Turning back to the first ingot, it was laid on the anvil with tongs by one person, and struck over and over again to flatten it out, making sure not the break it. It was placed in a second charcoal forge to keep the heat in it before being brought back onto the anvil for further drawing out. The sun was high in the sky, past noontide, when the billet was finally finished being drawn out. It was left in the second charcoal forge, simply keeping it hot as the second crucible was broken open and the process began again, only finishing as the sun went down.

* * *

**DAY FOUR:**

Two ingots of slightly different crucible steels had been left, stacked on top of one-another in the forge. They were carefully removed and forge-welded together. Heated up, they were forged together and drawn out longer and thinner over an hour of arduous work, forming two layers.

Then a wedge of metal was placed on the hot metal and hammered down until it cut them in half. Once against, the two blocks of metal were placed in the forge, one on top of another before being brought out and forge-welded together for an hour, forming four layers. Flux and ground charcoal were occasionally added as the work continued.

Over ten hours, the metal was taken from the heat of the flames forge-welded, drawn out, hot-cut and placed back in the forge nine times. From two bars of one layer of metal, it ended up as one vaguely blade-like length of metal containing five-hundred and twelve layers of metal. Once again, the blade was left in the forge to stay hot as the sun set.

* * *

**DAY FIVE:**

A few hours were spent carefully forging, from spare metal, two blocks of steel with two lines of metal sticking out the full length of the inch-by-inch piece of steel. They were then connected by a springy piece of metal to form a clamp, which was then placed on the hot blade.

Hammering used the metal mould to imprint a double fuller on the blade, and then the three worked on the edges, bevelling the blade out and refining the shape and working the tang. When the tang was completed to the smiths satisfaction, holes were punched through it in five places, two next to each-other to hold the crossguard on, two for the handle and one to attach the pommel. Then it was left, for them to concentrate on the blade.

Finally, the blade was effectively completed, to be left as the sun went down in the forge.

* * *

**DAY SIX:**

The blade was heated and cooled again and again, tempering it slowly over the day, until as night fell, it was heated until it glowed red-orange, then carefully taken to the stone circle, where a channel cut it the stone altar was laid with wood.

"Magnus, you wish to bear that sword?" the woman asked, once again clothed in the ritual robe of green.

"Aye, for better or worse, to defend me, to protect the right, I wish to wield it." was the answer.

"You are recognised as a man by laws of gods and men. Born, in the seventh moon of the year, I offer Holly for the moon, under which you were born, for eternal life and death, the circle of rebirth. It will give you protection from the storm and from evil. Alder to protect from water, and to bear the wind as a shield and a weapon. Apple for wisdom, youth and longevity, apple to bless you... us... with love and beauty. Control and focus your magic and mind with Ash for it will gift you the sea, and wield your blade as a tool in the circle of life and death, infused with Elder. Elm will make you unyielding in the face of magic in battle. Hazel will bring you water as shield and spear in battle, and peace and fertility in love."

The smith laid the glowing blade on the bed of wood as the woman continued to lay wood atop it.

"Elm's earthen strength within you and Oak's strength and courage without you, call upon the lightning in the storm to wield. Rowan defends from enchantment and guides the lost. When you are fallen, ask Mother Willow's healing spirit and she will raise you up, and take you to peace, happiness and love."

She then stepped back before saying the final words of the second ritual.

"I burn the wood, the bark, the leaves and the berries of Yew to strengthen your spells and to give you the gift of transformation."

Flames rose high around the altar, spreading out to encase the smith, burning higher and higher. The pyre lit up the dark sky above and the onlooking Saxon retreated, knowing this part of the ritual was not for him to witness. The druidess remained, pouring on switches of birch and willow, bowls of small blood-red cherries and apples of red and green. The magic in the air thickened and with a wave of her hand, the woman's robe turned from green velvet to tumbling purple showers of wisteria flowers.

For a few minutes, even those without magic could exert some influence on it, so much of it had been summoned up from the depths of earth and rock, brought down from the sky, released in fire from metal and wood. Suddenly the pyre died down and the smith's human form had given way to that of a massive wolf, shaggy furred and stood no less than four feet at the shoulder, about fifty-percent larger than an average wolf, and seven and a quarter feet from tip of his nose to his tail-bone.

An invocation was called out by the woman, and a pillar of magic in many colours began to twist, forming a cage, then creating a form within before slowly fading, revealing a second wolf. The summoned familiar was then cast to sleep as the smith returned to human form, a slightly animalistic look about his face and eyes.

The druidess turned away from him, a sway about her hips as she walked, revealing herself as the flowers forming her robe slipped off her form. In seconds the smith, disrobed to reveal a lithe, muscular form, hardened by hours at the forge, was behind her, catching her shoulder and spinning her around to face him. Face full of laughter, the druidess let him bring them both to the soft, mossy ground where they took one another again and again.

* * *

**DAY SEVEN:**

Reinvigorated after an evening and night spent at leisure followed by a sleep-in, the smiths set about finishing their work. The ritual-treated blade was etched with the runes to seal the blessed magic into the steel, before being heated up to temperature once more and taken back to the stone circle, glowing orange.

The channel that had been used for the blessed burning had been cleared of ashes and filled with oil. The druidess watched as the smith lowered the sword into the oil, allowing it to boil for a few seconds before drawing it back out. At that moment, the entire sword burst into flames.

"Magnus, your sword burns. Will its wielder use it in anger only when righteous fire grips him, to do away with evil?" the druidess asked.

"Aye."

"So you say, so may it be." she responded, raising both hands, one clutching a wand, weaving a spell about the sword.

The smith watched as the flames grew fiercer around the sword, yet ceased sending flecks of burning oil in every direction. He reached out with a second sense he did not realise he had, and quenched the fire. Then he reached out again and lit it once more.

Before the day was ended, the sword had been heated once more, straightened, for it had flexed being quenched, before being let to cool to a quarter of the temperature of the first quench, and then quenched again. At sundown, the blade was placed in a metal tube of oil, which was placed on top of the forge as it cooled.

That night, the half-moon shone in the sky.

* * *

**DAY EIGHT:**

The heat-treated blade was drawn from the hot oil and the long and arduous task of polishing and sharpening began. First, files were used to clear the muck of forging from the blade, then ever-finer grain stones, followed by sand paper and then glass paper to get to the gleaming metal underneath. Left in a cylinder of fairly low pH acid for an hour revealed the strange wavy patterns given by the layers formed in the forge-welding.

Last piece of work completed that day was sharpening an edge on the sword.

* * *

**DAY NINE:**

The Saxon walked into the stone circle, leading a bull by a rope halter. The animal's eyes were dull, and it had obviously been drugged with a potion to feel neither fear, nor pain. The Saxon led it to the altar where the smith stood, with the blade of his sword gripped by the tang in his gloves.

With one smooth move, he lifted the blade, half-swording it before plunging it into the base of the animal's skull, between the skull and spine, instantly killing the cow. The carcass was lifted to hang from the standing stones. Taking a keen knife, the smith removed the bull's sex organs, carefully restraining a wince, but taking care not to damage what was regarded as a delicacy, and worth a lot in any Chinatown butchers in London.

Opening the animal, chin to tail, he pulled it open, at which point the Saxon opened the ribcage, removing the organs. Those that weren't edible were offered as a burnt sacrifice on the altar. The rest was butchered until the skin had been separated from the meat, before it was laid out on the altar and all the remaining flesh scraped off and added to the sacrifice.

Finally, the skin was placed in a saltwater bath.

* * *

**DAY 10:**

The cowhide was taken from the saltwater, the bath drained, cleaned and replaced with freshwater, before the cowhide was replaced. A length of seasoned oak wood was carved down to form a handle for the sword, and two holes drilled through it and a slot running its length to fit onto the tang.

The simple, unadorned crossguard, had been made ready, as was the wolf's head pommel, formed in the shape of a wolf's head, modelled on that of the summoned familiar.

Iron nails were placed in the forge and heated until they were orange-red with heat. First, the guard was afixed, and two glowing hot nails were pushed through the holes in the centre of the guard when they aligned with the holes in the shoulders of the blade, and then the nails were hammered down to hot-rivet the guard on. Then the excess material was hot-cut off before they moved to the grip. The oak smoked and burned for a moment as the nails were hammered down and excess material removed, leaving the hot-riveted handle firmly attached. Finally, the pommel was attached in the same manner.

* * *

**DAY 11:**

Scraping the cow skin clean of any hair was another arduous task, but eventually it was completed and the hide was left for a few hours in a bath of calcium hydroxide and water. By noon, it was removed and rinsed, clean of any hairs. The bath was then emptied, cleaned and filled with a chemical which mixed the elements of chromium and sulphur, in which the hide was placed, where it would stay for the next twenty-four hours.

In the meantime, unused metal from the forging, which had been cut off after the forge-welding, was put to heat and then hammered out into a dagger. It would continue to be worked on in free time when the sword was not being worked on.

* * *

**DAY 12:**

The hide was once again rinsed in fresh water, then two small sections were cut off it, coated in a black tanning chemical, and left to soak for several hours, while the rest was removed for later use. Rinsed again after tanning, the two pieces were stretched out on a frame over a low, smouldering charcoal fire.

Once again, the dagger was worked on, creating a sister weapon to the hand-and-a-half sword.

* * *

**DAY 13:**

The leather was taken from the frame, cut to size and then the process of glueing and wrapping it commenced. The grip on both sword and dagger were completed with the leather. Final polishing and sharpening was completed on the last day of the forging.

Wielding both sword and dagger against an invisible opponent, the balanced weight of the bastard sword and the lethal counter-stabs offered by the dagger allowed him to feel a sense of pride in his craftsmanship.

* * *

**DAY 14:**

Under a full moon, fourteen days since the first crescent of a new moon had shone over the forging of a new sword, Cedric the Saxon stood before the druidess, holding the bastard sword as the smith knelt to one side.

"Is this a worthy blade of Magnus Rex, the Lord of the House of Potter, born of the line of kings and queens, chieftains and war mages?" Cedric asked.

"Aye, forged from the gift of the earth, in fire and water it has taken form." the druidess replied.

"Will this blade turn aside any who seeks to harm the Potter?" he asked again.

"Nay, it will rend flesh from bone and life from their body." once again the druidess replied.

"I see no warrior tall and powerful, clever and wise, fierce and honourable sat in the throne of his ancestors." Cedric announced.

"Hadrian, son of James, rise and take the throne of your ancestors. No crown is left for you nor any reward shall this give you, only the weight of your task. Preserve your family, protect your people." the druidess commanded.

Rising from his position, Harry met the gaze of the druidess, his mail clinking lightly and black cloak swirling about him as he settled into the ancient, weathered stone seat, the massive wolf, whose name he had yet to decide padded alongside him and sat upright and alert next to the throne.

"I, Cedric, son of Wulfe, acknowledge Hadrian, son of James as my lord and the master of this castle of Caereryr, to hold until he goes to his rest." Cedric knelt before him, driving the sword tip-first into the ground before the lord of the castle.

"Rise, for there is much to do, and little time in which to do it." Harry grinned, dismissing Cedric who promptly left.

"Well, never thought I'd be the one to name you to your position." the druidess smirked as she shifted to sit at his feet, leaning her head back against his thigh.

"Nor did I ever think I'd be _quite _so close to a member of the Malfoy family." Harry laughed, bending down and picking her up and pulling her into his lap.

"I've already offered to arrange for a couple of accidents to cleanse me of the taint of Lucius and Draco." Isabella Malfoi replied with a hint of a scowl.

"Problem is, Draco is too amusing with his particular brand of minor incompetent evil, and Lucius dying would create a massive power vacuum, besides I know where I stand with him. He's out for himself." Harry replied.

"Mhmm." she buried her head in his shoulder for a few moments.

"You know we're going to have to move eventually. I have to get back to Hogwarts and you need to return to Malfoy Manor and stay a couple of days before you and Draco return." Harry sighed. Their relationship was a closely guarded secret, and Draco had been withdrawn briefly from Hogwarts alongside his cousin for 'family matters' around the same time Harry had to depart to take up his family headship.

"You're lucky the arrangements for the first task were delayed so you would have the moon cycle to forge the sword." Isabella replied.

"It wasn't luck." Harry smirked before using one of her favourite words to explain what had happened; "It was arranged."

* * *

**December 1990, Hogwarts Castle Entrance Hall**

Harry pretended not to see Dumbledore emerge from a door from the dungeons as he returned to the castle, heading towards the grand staircase and hoping that the old wizard didn't attempt to accost him.

"Ah, Harry, all is well I hope?"

No, that hope went down the drain.

"Very much so Professor Dumbledore." Harry replied with a respectful incline of his head. "I hope my absence hasn't dulled the festivities?"

"You weren't around when I heard this superb jape involving a dwarf walking into a brothel with a jackass and a honeycomb-"

"And the rest is entirely too explicit for my young, and more importantly, innocent ears." Harry smirked. Sometimes exchanging banter with the headmaster could be amusing.

"Ah yes, how silly of me." Dumbledore shook his head; "How went your business out of the castle?"

"Fairly boring. Family estates thing, some idiot wanted me to take up headship, something about being declared an adult." Harry exaggeratedly rolled his eyes; "Imagine managing all the paperwork and the homework I have to do, at the same time! Maybe when I'm eighty, too old to stand and enjoy a good fight, I'll take over."

Dumbledore looked vaguely approving. Apparently his pet saviour wasn't supposed to be bothered with material wealth.

"Too much effort. Anyway, I'm heading up to Gryffindor Tower, need to get some sleep and talk to my friends... friend." a sour look came across his face. Harry had a few plans he'd been building around Ron Weasley which he'd had to scrap as the boy was too fickle.

"Of course my boy, and if you ever want to hear the punchline of the dwarf joke, do tell me."


	45. Deus Praevaricator: God War of Rome

**79th Year Anno Domini, Mons Vesuvius, Naples.**

The final assault, led by a faceless sorcerer on the heights of the hold of the mage gods of old was one of legends. The attackers were led by a man with his face cowled and cast into shadow, leading them into a battle soon to be forgotten under a cloud of liquid fire and grey sand falling from above. Ten-thousand wizards climbed the mountain, assembled from across the empire, as far north as Britannia, as far west as Mauritania Tingitana, as far south as Berenice and as far east as Larissa on the Persian Gulf.

At the head of this formidable force was a skilled and powerful wizard, who called himself with some amusement 'figulus' in the tongue of the Romans. Potter, for he moulded the field of battle about him, wielding a sword and spiked round shield of the same strange wavy-patterned dark metal as the tip of the short spear held behind his shield, the same metal as his plate and ringmail.

On a plateau below the peak of the volcano, Mars the Bringer of War sounded his horn, bringing forth ten score of legions of thralls, leading them into the battle. The Potter threw aside men like rag dolls, his spells fell and deadly. He punched holes through plate as thick as a man's palm front to back, cast from the spear, for it was truly a staff, wielded by the most powerful sorcerers.

Fire thundered through the unflinching ranks of the enslaved, and they fell unflinchingly. The earth shook and the sky darkened under battle magic that could bring about the end of all. What could not be seen was the dark and seductive taint of mage-craft that twisted the mind and destroyed the consciousness of men. Fallen thralls stood once more, eyes unseeing as they joined the assault on the gods upon the mountain.

A lesser god, wielding a forge-hammer and a staff of twisted bronze moved to engage the sorcerer. It was over in moments, a stroke from the hammer fell upon the shield of the sorcerer, then the bronze staff countered a spell, only for that sword of dark patterns, molten metal frozen in the form of a blade, to find its target in his heart.

"Deos cadent!"

"DEOS CADENT!"

The roar of the attacking wizards echoed down to the sea, where beneath the waves, the first of the greater god mages lay slain, for self-proclaimed gods could truly fall. Neptune would never depart the great ocean and ascend the heights of the earthen forge to where Vulcan worked his metals.

Ten-thousand wizards formed a wall of shields as a hail of spells fell upon them, where one fell another came forward to form an impenetrable shell of enchanted metal. Out in the open surrounded by his risen dead, the Potter was attacked by two gods. In one smooth movement, he butchered the first of the brothers Pales by driving the spiked shield into him, impaling him there, before splitting asunder his leather helmet and skull with one terrible blow.

The third god to fall was the second of the brothers Pales, cut down after a brief exchange of spells. Two spells splashed upon his shield, before the Potter sent a shield-crusher to shatter the shield spell wielded by the second brother Pales. He charged forward, catching a sickle-sword on his vambrace before striking aside the crook that formed his staff, moving smoothly into a cut which disembowelled the second shepherd god.

"Deos cadent!"

"DEOS CADENT!"

The roar was silenced by the thrum of hooves as two riders charged their lines in chariots, one a woman in full plate, her chariot drawn by four horses which she whipped until they frothed at the mouth and bled at the haunches. The second rode a flaming chariot, the horses not of flesh but of fire. He struck down wizard after wizard with a bow until he was confronted by the sorcerer.

The ground reared up in front of his chariot, the fiery horses extinguished beneath earth and rock and the chariot's burning frame bent and broken. Walking forwards, the wizard sidestepped the charging goddess and struck her down from her chariot with a single thrust of his spear-headed staff before plunging his sword into the fallen Apollo. Flames enwreathed the blade, drawn forth from the heart of the sun god, as he struck left and right, cutting down the legions of thralls they had led into battle.

By the end of the day, the sorcerer's robe was still black, but on his cloak was his insignia, a scroll wrapped around a sword, bearing the words 'Deus Praevaricator'. And the last mage god, Jupiter, had died bleeding on his shattered throne in his shattered halls, but in one last act of defiance, had broken the spells binding the heat of the great forge beneath and Mons Vesuvius broke, heralding the end of the Roman God Wars.

* * *

**1066 Anno Domini**

Arrows hissed back and forth as the Norman cavalry broke the lines of the Huscarls. One man, black-robed amidst the armoured nobility struck down a Huscarl with a flaming sword before charging the king. To place your sword in the breast of one who claimed godhood was to take their immortality and make it your own.

The breaking of the gods on Vesuvius had slaughtered a hundred gods, many killed by multiple blows from many men. The abuse of what they took began immediately, and even if they were slain, the power corrupted the slayer all too soon. Struck with arrows, Harold Godwinson raised his godsword, taken from the cooling corpse of the slayer of Janus' killer. He charged on foot, his horse peppered with shafts. Then he fell, his helmet and head split by a blow from the black-robed horseman.

It was a hunt that would last centuries, killing off any who claimed the immortality of the god mages. And take it himself, until he could finally take his own life and go to his rest. But until then, the man once known as Harry Potter would hunt.

* * *

__A/N: Maybe an Avengers crossover, kill off the members of the Norse pantheon whenever they descend to the same plane of existence as planet earth. As for how Harry came to be in 79 AD, I genuinely have little idea, work that out and leave it in a review. Maybe some more candidates for a sudden and violent death at the hands of the God Breaker? Hessian Horseman from Sleepy Hollow just sprang to mind randomly.__


	46. Commander Hadrian of Rhodes 1

Not far off the coast of Turkey is the most eastern of the Greek islands, Rhodes. Lying at the north-eastern tip of this strategically-placed island is the eponymous fortress-port of Rhodes. In 1988, UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, designated the ancient city as a World Heritage Site, recognising it as a landmark of exceptional cultural and historic significance.

This opened an equally significant can of worms. Set at a crossroads between Europe, the Levant, Anatolia and Africa, Rhodes had first been a metropolis of Ancient Greece throughout the golden age of that entity. Then Rome, again in its golden age, took Rhodes, yet when Rome fell and the empire broke into the West and the East, the Holy Roman and the Byzantine Empires, Rhodes passed to the latter, but was frequently attacked, even conquered by Arabs and Turks, even the Genoese.

Eventually, through conquest, it fell into the hands of the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitaller. They were to hold it for two-hundred and fifteen years before the island once more fell to conquest, this time to the Ottoman Empire of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. It would be a decade short of four centuries before the island once more changed hands, in 1912 as the Italians seized many islands in the eastern Aegean. Here things become rather more fuzzy, as Italy signed a treaty with Greece, promising all those islands, save for Rhodes, which would become an autonomous state. Then during the Second World War, after the Italian Armistace, the island was occupied by Germany, before passing back into the hands of the Greeks after the war.

Suddenly a goldmine of tourist money, and with Greece and Turkey, neither blameless, at one-another's throats, especially since the coup-invasion in Cyprus, a significant risk came of another Greco-Turkish war. It took a significant amount of negotiating, including Britain, a major Mediterranean power, controlling Gibraltar and Cyprus before an intermediate solution was found to preventing an inter-NATO conflict.

The Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, now in the form of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta were to take administrative control of an autonomous state. The negotiations were sealed in 1993, and the first custodian?

The final decision was made a few months later, where, behind great spells and enchantments of concealment in the Domum Magicae in the Vatican, the Council of Mages sat. In one fell stroke, they would exile one of their own who had proven somewhat unpopular to the non-magical world, as well as many miles away, and take control of a base for operations into Asia. The name of the Custos Castri? The seventeen-year old Hadrian Potter.

* * *

**January 2nd 1994, Fortress Rhodes, Rhodes.**

Hadrian Potter, for that was the name that he was blessed with, written on the papers at the orphanage he was abandoned at, sat at his desk and pondered. Dawn was barely rising over the city, and his duties, the first day of them, had yet to begin. He was a skilled battle mage, an adventurer, archaeologist and student of some repute. He was also an orphan. He had faint flashes of a vanished past, but after a great deal of study and spellcraft, he found his memories were sealed, only leaking through hints of that past. His records at the orphanage began on the second of November 1981, twelve years and two months ago.

He wanted his past. All else he set his mind to seek, he took with ease. But not his past. The strange thing was, he had never ventured to mainland Britain, a part of him utterly terrified that he was not wanted. Sighing, he pulled a goblet across the desk and flicked open the top of a jug with his thumb, pouring half a goblet. Probably not the best way to start a morning, but he felt in necessary.

Having arrived only the previous day, he'd settled into a simple set of rooms in one of the wings of the Grandmaster's Palace, the citadel known locally as the Kastello. Today, his work would begin on the heritage of the island and the city. Dressing quickly, he left his rooms and made his way to one of the balconies overlooking the city. A brief smile appeared on Harry's face as he saw the people awakening, market stalls being wheeled out and the city coming to life.

Glancing at his watch, Harry realised that he had a few hours until work began, so he decided to slip into the city. Maybe even get something local to eat. A brief grimace as he concentrated on utilising the minimal metamorphmagus powers he had, he quickly lengthened his hair and turned it brown, pulling it into a ponytail. Dressed in typical tourist garb, he could blend in without too much difficulty.

With a bellyful of sea bream, which he'd bought off a fishing boat at the quayside, roasted over charcoals, Harry returned to the Kastello, changing into a dark-blue suit, red tie and white shirt, ready to receive his guests at a large table in the grand hall of the fortress. Waiting, stood beside the seat at the head of the table until the last of his guests arrived and were seated.

Harry lifted a briefcase onto the table and flipped it open.

"Good morning gentlemen. What you see before you are Franklins, hundred-dollar bills. The fortress has lacked a certain amount of maintenance and care, which is to be rectified with significant investment. I have brought you here, structural engineers, archaeologists, artillery experts, glaziers, potters, stonemasons, carpenters, blacksmiths, weavers, for initial discussion and work, starting with a budget of twelve million dollars." Harry stated, for the thirty-three by thirty-three inch case had had sixty stacks of bills, five by twelve, and a good eight or nine inches deep. "You have all received an initial payment of one-thousand dollars plus travel and costs for staying because you are the best in your fields. While I will doubtless speak to you individually, all I want initially is surveys of the fortress and the surrounding heritage areas of the city. I want to know the condition of the structures. I already have some work known to need doing urgently. Any questions?"

"None sir." came the reply from the corner of the table occupied by the structural surveyors and engineers.

"Then you may go." Harry stated, dismissing them. Then he turned to the archaeologists. "Gentlemen, your job is to work alongside those working on the structures. All artefacts discovered to be bagged, tagged and placed in the custody of the Kastello for study, conservation and display. Credit will be assigned to the team and to the archaeologists who discovered them. Questions?"

There were none and the archaeologists were dismissed.

"Those of you who are artisans, the glaziers, potters, stonemasons, carpenters, gunfounders, bellfounders and weavers, please give me your requirements for facilities in which to work, and any other requirements for me to review. The bellfounders I ask to inspect all major bells in the city and send me their surveys, for further action should any need recasting." Harry continued; "For the gunfounders, I already have a list of weapons to be cast, including samples of metal to be examined to get the right alloys. I must note that the weapons should be fully capable for display firing. We are looking at bombards, mortars, culverins and cannon, of which we already have examples either to be used for making patterns of or using to form moulds."

He took a sip of water to clear his throat.

"Blacksmiths, as I am expected to maintain a small garrison of ceremonial guardsman _and _be self-sufficient, I will need maintenance and production of arms and armour, typical of the time of the Hospitaller occupation of this city." Harry nodded to them; "The rest of you, carpenters, glaziers, potters, stonemasons and weavers are to be concerned with the buildings, the outfitting inside and out with furniture, windows, roofing and suchlike."

Harry knew the costs and needs of old fortresses, as his previous assignment after returning from two terms at the University of Cairo studying Egyptology had been the acquisition and restoration of the three great forts of Malta, Ricasoli, St. Elmo and St. Angelo. However, their capabilities as operating bases and as P.R opportunities were extensive. His day, indeed it was likely his year, was not over soon.

* * *

Rubbing a hand across the bridge of his nose, Harry flicked through his diary. The first day of his command of the fortress-port and he'd dealt with the surveying for conservation and restoration of the fabric of the fortress, plus outfitting it with furniture. He had met with the local police chief and assured him of the support of the Order and laid the groundwork for further cooperation.

Next, coming off an otherwise-empty container ship transiting to the Sovereign Base Area on Cyprus were some patrol boats to augment the seaborne security of the island, specifically the fastest, most powerful gunboats available. Brave-class, and their derivative Søløvens and Type 153s. The ten craft would be of significant use.

Harry stood up, walking over to the corner of his room and opening a chest. One of several, each containing a number of historical artefacts. This one contained swords, blades he had acquired through his travels, blades of great historical and magical significance.

The first his hand came upon were the blades of Beowulf, the reforged Naegling, and then a rare and ancient sword named Hrunting, that had but once failed the hand who hefted it in battle, then the Hrothsvarth, and a greatsword, a blade of cold metal like milkglass forged around the hilt of the sword that was destroyed slaying the mother of Grendel, known as Ice, the Jotunsvarth. Then, passing over the furies of Aengus, the Honjo, pausing over the Dyrnwyn, twin swords of Teutonic make, the Mistilteinn, the Frankish Almace, the battle blade Dáinsleif, the answerer - Fragarach and twin swords of Chinese make, before he drew forth Skofnung, another blade of Norse make, a horcrux or phylactery of types, but containing twelve whole souls.

Each sword was of significant historical and, in some cases, magical significance, the subject of his study. The knowledge in these swords, the enchantments and the processes of creating them were a mystery he wished to unlock. Harry placed Skofnung on a cloth of silk, taking it over to his desk, where he surrounded it with iron nails, placing a horseshoe around the tip and the pommel to contain any magic going awry as he documented the sword.

The study of the spells and the science of the metal that formed these weapons was fascinating, something Harry might one day put into writing. But above all, he wanted to create a weapon of such incredible craftsmanship and spellwrighting as to become a legend. All his knowledge of magic, all of his knowledge of the science of steel into one masterwork.

It would likely take months of work, around his other duties, but Harry began immediately, simply with the design and writing down what materials he'd need. The core, designed to flex would be two bars of high-carbon steel twisted about one-another to form a spring in the centre of a double-fuller. The metal of the fullers would be a softer shock-absorbant steel, and ultra-high carbon edges with high trace quantities of the elements of boron and chromium. Then he would etch and polish the blade to reveal any patterning before coating the whole blade in sulphides to protect it thoroughly from corrosion and give it a gold tint.

That was just the metal side of the sword. He had other designs for the enchantments. On a shelf behind him, he had a few odd objects, each containing a restless soul, including two sent to him by an associate in Britain, the soul of the Viking of Stamford Bridge, the berserker who had held the crossing over the Derwent until slain, as well as the soul of Eyestein Orre who led a failed relief counter-attack at the selfsame battle.

Six bars of metal in the blade, into each he intended to seal the soul of a restless warrior before forging the blade together. Then when the blade, quenched, was drawn, blazing from the quenching oil, Harry intended on sealing those flames in the steel in such a way that the wielder could summon them, and then enhance their power.

All in all, he had no idea how long such works of enchantment would take. He was stepping into new territory. Combining soul magic, a hint of necromancy, elemental magic, and his knowledge of curses, potions and poisons... His first attempt at a magnum opus. At the same time, he still had extensive duties.


	47. Commander Hadrian of Rhodes 2

**Early June 1994, Fortress Rhodes, Rhodes.**

It was in the late hours of the evening that word reached the Kastello that wizards of an unsavoury nature had landed on the island. Summoned from his arcane library, Harry gave up on his plans for a night's sleep, deciding instead to walk down to the police station in the Old City of Rhodes.

It was in that police station that Harry heard what had happened, a landing by a militia of wizards from all over Europe and Near Asia intending to seize the newly-transferred island and use it as a base from which to launch attacks on anyone they didn't like or simply had something they wanted. Their weapon? A basilisk. A serpent-demon of ancient make, born of unnatural spellcrafting and capable of terrible destruction.

Immediately, with the security of the islanders and the thousands of visitors compromised, Harry acted. A lot of people had mocked him for his age, but there was no doubt that in a crisis, his command was welcomed. An cordon sealed the quarry, his gunboats positioned close offshore, and the nearest battle mage was alerted. Unfortunately, the only battle mage anywhere in the Aegean was Harry himself.

He was almost looking forward to the fight.

* * *

Almost glowing pale-golden, Harry's sword had kept its edge well since completion. On each side of the guard just below the blade were red gems, formed into the shape of blazing infernos, each holding fire elemental enchantments. That keen blade was sentient, though it did not speak, Harry could feel through it emotions and even feel and learn some of the skill of the souls embedded in the metal. His battle staff of red ironwood stood ready in one hand as he approached, alone, the entrance to the quarry.

A mere thought and he was sealed under spells of stealth, making him silent, making him nigh-imperceptible and nigh-invisible, which would allow him to attack without warning. Which was excellent for Harry, for the battle mage was a specialist in shock warfare. A bit of initial stealth to neutralise sentries and try and locate the basilisk, then he'd go for all-out shock-and-awe tactics.

Waiting until he had the sun rising behind him so that he'd be able to work, Harry approached the entrance to the quarry facility, seeing just one guard in a stereotypical black robe pacing the gate, the rest of the facility surrounded by a chainlink fence. A sickening thunk announced the collision between the back of the guard's head with of the part of Harry's ironwood staff that was plated in spiked steel. Any scream was silenced by the instant massive trauma inflicted by the impact.

Harry drew out his golden sword and drove it into the back of the fallen wizard about where his heart was. He grinned as the weapon sucked all life energy from the body with grey flames, leaving it a dessicated wreck which crumbled to dust when he disturbed it by withdrawing the sword, nearly singing with necromantic energy.

The quarry that opened up before Harry as he advanced was a relatively shallow affair with a sloping floor, and was much wider than it was across from his position. At the far northern end, on Harry's right from his perch on the cliff side to the east, a gaping cave opened up in the rockface. He couldn't see anything, but given the guards pacing it, and the number of wizards outside, it was not being used as a headquarters, but a containment zone for a very dangerous weapon.

His eyes narrowed at the roof of the cave, then at the cave mouth. Harry decided that if the basilisk was in there, he was either going to collapse the cave roof, starve the creature of food, water and oxygen, or simply blast the whole thing with one of the nastier fire battle spells he was proficient with.

Catching a snatch of conversation on the wind, Harry rolled his eyes at the vanity of dark wizards. Disciples of Herpo indeed. He disappeared with a near-silent swish, reappearing on the quarry floor opposite the cave mouth, with the dark wizards positioned between them.

The concealment spells slipped away, revealing him in all his glory as a battle mage. A long coat of plates of beaten, smoked steel and black dragonscale, all on a jacket of dragon leather, a cuirass of gleaming steel centred with a sunburst of gold, thigh and elbow length chainmail attached to the chestpiece, his face concealed by cowl and hood, leaving only his eyes visible. Then of course there was the blade at his side, a bastard sword sealed in its sheath, a revolver on his hip and boots of the same dragon leather.

He attacked. His first spell was wandless, a mere gravity charm triggered by him clenching an armoured fist. The two closest wizards suffered immediate and horrible deaths in less than a second. Harry watched, grimly as the they suffered the results of the pressure of the air around them suddenly increasing from just under fifteen pounds per square inch by five-hundred atmospheres to three-and-a-third tons of pressure per square inch. The resulting implosion compressed the poor bastards almost instantly into tiny mushed lumps of red... stuff. As he concentrated on the counter-attack, Harry unclenched the fist holding the spell, and with the sudden release of the five-hundred atmospheres of pressure, the remains of the wizards blasted outwards in an explosive fashion, coating the surrounding stone and sand with blood as that mush of red goo reacted to the sudden release of pressure in an explosive fashion.

Turning so cutting spells flashed off his armoured coat as the stunned dark wizards shrugged off their moment of frozen terror and attacked. The slicing spells merely left scars on the armoured coat, allowing Harry to strike the nearest wizard a terrible blow with a sweeping head-height swing of his staff before thrusting it forward.

"FULMINE MORTEM!" he incanted, a crackling charge of electricity bursting from the end of the staff, gripping a wizard in the terrible power of what was a mere shade of nature's electricity.

Switching the spell, he turned the end of his staff, lifting the smoking corpse into the air before thrusting the staff forward, sending the body bowling into some men emerging from a magical tent, crushing the tent with them. The canvas structure burst into flames, Harry throwing a wind spell at it to fan the fire, turning it into a raging pyre for those wizards. A fitting funeral.

More curses flashed his way, but with terrible metallic clangs, they were thrown aside by shields, then the response came. A ball of shocking yellow erupted from his staff, tinged with blue to the front. The blue of the shield-breaking spell blasted a hole in their jointly-cast bunker spell, then the blasting spell splattered them across the quarry. With such a gruesome end dealt by the battle mage, it was of little surprise that the invading wizards tried to close the distance and surround him.

It seemed a good idea, right up until the first one toppled into a pit of boiling quicksand. Then the battle mage was amongst them, two wizards swept up off their feet into a raging maelstrom of sand conjured with a typhoon of air. The sand stripped them to the bone, and then it was too late. Harry's flaming sword struck left and right, cutting the wizards down with contemptuous ease, cleaving off arms and heads with his sword and finishing the maimed off either with the spiked butt of his staff or rolling them into the boiling quicksand.

Then Harry heard the smooth rustle of skin on the sandy rock. He froze for a moment, listening and identifying the location, then vanished. Appearing on top of the cave entrance, Harry looked down on the back of the sinuous beast moving forth from its layer, and struck. He drove his staff, with a great build-up of magic, into the stone beneath his feet and collapsed the cave entrance. As he rode the landslide, he waited until the perfect moment and bounded forward onto the basilisk, driving his sword deep into it's spine between the armoured plates of its back, neatly paralysing it with one thrust. Dropping onto the ground from the snake, he conjured a tray with which to catch the basilisk's precious lifeblood before opening its throat.

A highly magical substance such as that would be of great use to a thaumaturge such as he.

* * *

**August 1994, Domum Magicae, the Vatican, Roma.**

Entering the Grand Hall of the Mages was always an interesting event. Seated in serried rows, from nearly two-hundred countries were the most powerful and skilful wizards, headed up by the Arch Mage. The Mage Councillors, in their roles as politicians and diplomats, then the occasional combat mage, like himself. For Harry, he elected for an appearance of supreme boredom, making sure they all knew he had far more useful things to be doing than delivering his annual report. Battle mages were used to commanding, leading men, fighting. Not paperwork and speechifying.

Chronomancy, thaumaturgy, demonology, necromancy, pyromancy, invocations and summonings. Not bureaucracy. He could summon wraiths and demons, he could fiddle with the passing of time. Elements could be combined in magic to create other substances. He could bring up the shades of the dead, burn a great forest to the ground. The names and powers of the Old Gods were his to invoke. With his eyes alone he could shatter the mind of an enemy, with his own mind he could project terror or courage into others. Arcane spells were his to wield, his sword his right hand in battle, his magic his left.

Present him with paperwork or politics and he tended to start looking for heads to remove.

"Battle Mage Potter, have you heard of the situation in Britain?" asked the Arch Mage.

"All I know of current affairs in Britain is what I have discussed with my counterparts in the Royal Navy as per the discussions on the defence of Rhodes." Harry stood and announced; "That is limited to matters in the Mediterranean and Aegean, and the supply of retired seamen as an auxiliary force to man my patrol boats."

"Then I fear you have not heard of the return of the Dark Lord Voldemort." the Arch Mage.

"The who-what?!" replied Harry.

A few uncomfortable glances were shared between the witches and wizards seated there.

"The British dark lord." hinted the Arch Mage.

"YOU FORGET, I raised myself as a bit of a vagabond around Continental Europe for a number of years before settling into my study of magic." Harry silenced the whispers; "Names of dark wizards mean little to me, unless I'm intending on making a corpse out of them."

"Perhaps then it would be best if you learnt this yourself, but we have reports from a trusted source in the form of the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards that the believed-dead dark wizard has in some form evaded death after what should have been a fatal curse." the Arch Mage half-explained; "It has been decided to form an investigative mission to the United Kingdom, and as our sole British member, it is common sense that you should lead it."

"Lucky thing that wizards so lack such a thing as common sense." Harry mocked, before the ensuing silence informed him of what he really didn't want to know; "You're not bloody serious, I haven't been in that damned country since I was a toddler. A homeless orphan. With respect, my home is Rhodes now, and you'll need a bloody siege to pry me out of there."

"Rhodes is still, and should be for many years yet, your seat as a mage of this council, but despite however many years since you stepped on the soil of green England, you have spent many years on Malta and Gibraltar, sailed and fought with the Royal Navy, and far better to lead such a mission than a number of our more... set in their ways... mages." the Arch Mage sighed; "What would persuade you to agree to this mission?"

"We haven't had any involvement in Britain besides some covert assistance to the failed Jacobite Rebellions, so I want full diplomatic protection." Harry demanded; "The right also to call in reinforcements should I feel myself, my mission and civilian populations are put in jeopardy. The right to run my mission as I see fit without interference at any level."

There was a collective wince. It was a lot to demand, and the last time the young battle mage had brought in 'reinforcements', it had been in the South Atlantic, routing out a cult in Angola obsessed with human sacrifice. Finding himself out of his depth, he'd decided to simply flatten the jungle around the target. He did check beforehand that all the spells the cult had in place had driven out all the wildlife before calling in the naval gunfire strike.

The jungle target was divided into sectors, a box laid out on a map, with a grid of thirty-by-thirty foot squares, laid out in a grid forty by forty, or fourteen-hundred sectors, each of nine-hundred square feet. The heavy cruiser employed for this destructive purpose laid down salvo after salvo for a mere ten minutes, putting down a hundred-and-twenty kilo shell with ten kilos of high explosive into each sector, completely flattening it with a total of a hundred and sixty-eight tons of shells and fourteen tons of explosives. The whole jungle target sector had been flattened in under ten minutes and when the reinforced mages went in for the clear-up, it had not been pleasant.

"With your status as Lord Inquisitor of the Holy Office of the Magical Worlds, I believe that your independence of operation can be guaranteed so long as regular reports are received here. The matter of diplomatic immunity should be already in place due to your work with the Sovereign Military Order of Malta." the Arch Mage replied thoughtfully; "However I would suggest holding off on bringing force to bear and attempt to cultivate diplomatic ties with the Court of St. James. I won't limit your use of your own staff and forces, but I will have to approve any mobilisation of mages of the Holy Office."

"Finally, as agreed, I will delegate temporary command of Rhodes to a person of my choice until my return from Britain." Harry laid down his last demand, and with its acceptance, he went to pack a bag. He was returning to one of the hearts of magic, the British Isles.


	48. Illegitimi non Carborundum - London

Since his retirement from the post of Director of Special Forces, Harry's work had increased beyond anything he'd done before. It wasn't like any of the dozen wars he'd fought in, there was no desert, no jungle, nor the cold and lonely valleys of the mountainous Balkans. His war was being fought on British soil.

His headquarters was the lowest vaulted croft of Ravenscroft Manor, deep beneath the manor itself, spreading out as far as the moat itself. The walls were plastered with maps, each pillar of the vaulted croft surrounded with filing cabinets. A gun rack sat by the dark-stained and iron-studded door, and it was in this domain that he ruled supreme.

Andrew McCabe, a one-time steelworker from Glasgow, turned paratrooper and SAS Warrant Officer looked on. Jock McCabe had fought in more wars than his boss, his first fights being on the estates of Belfast and Derry. He'd parachuted into the cold South Atlantic to join the carrier Hermes to attack the Falklands, he'd fought in Lebanon. And then his most unusual task had been to act as guardian and advisor to a boy barely into two figures of years.

Harry Potter. A wizard. The Wizard if MI5 were to be believed, the be-all and end-all of wizardry. Jock's beliefs had been significantly altered in the years leading up to the 1990 annihilation of the purist movement as it was then. They'd been altered even further since. Watching his boss balancing threat after threat to Britain, wading through paperwork and memorising one face after another, he wondered if Harry was some kind of primordial chaos entity.

Detailed maps of the major cities of Britain were neatly labelled. The majority were the marijuana symbol, though a good few were the symbol of marijuana on top of an image of a pound coin. Consumers and dealers of drugs, one of the roots of petty crime, itself the beginning of the slippery slope to many other things.

On a projector screen on the wall was a map of the entirety of Britain. Passing the Medway Forts on that same fateful route as Admiral de Ruyter had once sailed, the fast frigate Rapid cruised towards Chatham, having been once again employed for the smuggling of arms and drugs from the Continent. Harry moved his pieces around where she had landed her cargo as he read through the reports, preparing to send off the intelligence to the Essex Police unit he was working with on this operation.

Tracked weapons and drugs would allow them to clear the ancient city of Colchester of much of its major crime, and hopefully he'd be able to track any extremists in the city, or indeed the area. Turning to a second, paper, map of Britain, he eyed the reports pinned to it. The purist faction had reformed under a coalition of the more extremist wizarding nobles. Luckily they hadn't been able to put aside their egos and cease squabbling, until recently. That had rendered them impotent.

The door swung open, admitting a shapely blonde in the desert camouflage favoured by Harry's personal staff who had retired from the Special Air Service to continue working with him. Sweeping her hair out of her eyes with one hand, she passed a file to Jock.

"Anything interesting?" Harry asked.

"Just political intelligence and analysis. Reading it saps my will to live." Amy commented as Jock flicked the file open; "I wonder sometimes why we bother with a government. There are some good ones, there are some bad ones, there are some downright fanatical ones, and then there's the majority who are merely incompetent."

"Democracy m'dear." drawled Jock; "It's what we have to put up with to avoid being either a fascist or communist nation. As tempting as burning the government to the ground sometimes seems. Democracy is the right to be ignorant. That's why we're working to erase any threat to the safety and security of our population. Democracy is why we, some specialist units of the army and our intelligence services work in the shadows to keep the darkness at bay. Before you joined the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, the night after the bombings in London, Harry said something to us, remind me..?"

"We can survive worse." Harry quoted himself; "London can survive worse. 2043 will be the two-thousandth anniversary of the city. It has revolted, suffered revolution, been burnt to the ground twice, razed to the ground once, bombed, firebombed, and conquered at least twice, but no matter what has befallen it, England and indeed Britain, its people, its throne and its capital have endured."

* * *

_Someone sent me an e-mail asking about the events in London on Wednesday, and I decided to scribble out a quick trailer for a story I've been working on for some time that would also address what we're feeling. It can be summed up in what I call the HMS Hood Reaction Syndrome._

_Five percent shock, five percent fear. The rest is made up of fury, anger, defiance and vengefulness._

_Civil war, invasion, insurgency, terrorism, disaster, tyrannical rule, weak rule. We endure. London endures. Britain endures. Even a faint shadow of a superpower that it once was, Britain is not lacking in spine. Politics and religion divide us at every moment, nationalist interests, religious beliefs, creeds, colours, sexuality and a hundred other things divide us. Our nation is one of the few things that unite us. If you're in London, perhaps you'll have heard that the people of London are turning out in force, particularly gathering in Trafalgar Square beneath the statue of Admiral Lord Nelson in a peaceful gathering in memory of the dead and in defiance of the attacks on British soil._

_And I'm raising a glass of something good to no-one and to everyone. It was inevitable that an attack would be perpetrated on British soil, we can't stop them all, especially a lone wolf who isn't buying suspicious objects like chemicals for explosives or firearms and ammunition. A car and a kitchen knife do not a terrorist make, only the method of their employment. I can only thank whatever deity/deities you/I believe in that the casualties weren't higher._

_ElMarquis._


	49. Charlus Potter - Volkel

**24th August 1944, Bay of Biscay, off Bordeaux.**

Easing the Typhoon around in a low, flat turn, he opened the throttle up to the emergency power wire. The Sabre engine's roar became a bellow and, obscured by the sea state, he began his attack. The ship he identified as his primary target was a fifteen-hundred ton destroyer, cruising out of Bordeaux.

Flying out of an Advanced Landing Ground in western France, Charlus Potter's wing was spreading out into two-man formations on a Rhubarb, hunting down and shooting up enemy troop formations, blowing up bridges, tunnels, trains and vessels. The first warning Charlus had of the fact his enemy had been alerted was the sky around him opening up into puffs of black smoke and tracer snaking past the Typhoon.

Heeling about, broadside on, the Elbing opened up with its nine Flakvierling, chewing up the sky around him. The Typhoon shook as a shell smacked through the skin of the port wing, not penetrating but leaving the metal like it had been opened up with a giant steak knife. Then Vicky, a South African flying for the RAF, his wingman made a mistake. Charlus would never know why, whether it was the stress of the moment or the perpetual fear that they were all suffering from, but he reared his Typhoon up to climb out of the attack. Immediately he was bracketed with shells, the Typhoon shaking as Charlus watched in through tired eyes. The aircraft rolled a hundred-and-eighty degrees in its vertical climb, slowed and stalled. Then a sheet of orange flame billowed from the engine, the aircraft flicked onto its back and tumbled into the sea.

Taking his eyes off the spot where his wingman went down, Charlus pressed the attack. Bounding along, the massive chin airscoop barely inches off the peaks of the waves, he jammed the throttle through the wire and into emergency power. Then it was there, right in front of him. Guns all along the broadside fired, flashes from their muzzles spewing shells from her four-inch guns to men crouched at the rails with small arms. All aimed at the Typhoon.

Charlus picked out his spots to attack, as the ship turned into his attack to present less of a target. He could see a bank of torpedo tubes and he could see mine rails aft. A moment to touch a switch and then a salvo of rockets left his aircraft, racing for the stern of his target, one rocket after another jettisoning from under the wings.

Not all hit, but enough did to slow the enemy ship, and fires broke out. Still with the line of attack open, Charlus switched to his quad twenty-millimetre Hispanos and opened up. The muzzles on the long protrusions from his wings flickered and flashed, his thumb clamped on the gun button as the cannon spat shell after shell.

A flakvierling fell silent, an empty revenge for Vicky as the crew were cut down, their thin sheet of steel no protection, instead turning into shrapnel with every shell. He briefly drew the guns to bear on the bank of torpedo tubes, sweeping the shells across the superstructure. Charlus could see a loader carrying a shell to one of the guns cut down. Then a spine-shattering thump, a one-and-a-half inch shell smacked into the underside of the Typhoon and two more passed through the port wing without detonating the nearly empty ammunition boxes. The cannons clacked loudly, falling silent as the last shell left each gun. Then a terrific explosion and a jarring impact as the ship blew up. Charlus jammed his foot on the rudder and wrestled the Typhoon as it clipped the mast, rearing out of the water.

Hydraulics gone. No pressure. No undercarriage, no pitch adjustment, no flaps. The wing was bent back and had a scar cutting into it from a wire. Charlus could barely keep the thing flying straight with his foot jammed into the floor with the rudder hard over. Throttling back, he made for France, and hoped to either find somewhere secluded to crash-land and burn out his aircraft, or to bail out.

* * *

**December 1944, Blackhall, Blackmore Vale, Dorset**

Arcturus Black, the third of that name born to the House of Black didn't know what to think. What to say. What to do. His sister had received, through her personal mailbox in the local muggle village post office a telegram. Charlus Potter had named her next-of-kin, and he had never realised that his cousin, who was as good to him as his sister, had even exchanged more than a few stinging words in a Hogwarts hallway with the Potter scion. And there was a thing.

Charlus Potter, somewhat quiet compared to some of the more boisterous Gryffindors. But unlike many of them, as expected of the get of Simeon Potter, he had a steely core and a solid backbone. Not bad for a halfblood. Most conversations between him and any of Salazar's house were a frank exchange of words, followed by an even franker exchange of curses. A wizard Arcturus respected, even after one fight resulting in Charlus landing him in the Hospital Wing after blasting him down a corridor with a Norse battle spell.

The first he knew of his sister's relationship was a confession after he'd finally broken her door down, three days after she'd last left her rooms. That stark, empty telegram. _DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT ACT. SQN LDR C.S POTTER IS MISSING PRESUMED DEAD. DATED 31ST AUG 1944._

Now an owl had arrived bearing a letter signed and sealed by Charlus' hand.

_Dorea._

_Disregard previous communiques, am alive._

_Supernumerary to 2 Sqn, 122 Wing, 2nd TAF._

_Based at ALG B-80 Volkel._

_Bloody cold._

_C.S Potter._

Arcturus snorted at the last bit before the signature before rereading it. Nearly as devoid of emotion as the telegram. He stared at his sister who was climbing up one of the bookcases to find a book.

"What are you doing Dorea?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Looking for an Atlas. Then I'm going to work out where in Merlin's name Volkel is." she replied curtly.

"Sounds Germanic." Arcturus replied, before pausing; "You cannot think of going there. The Moat is still in lockdown, and Grindelwald still holds Germany."

"There are ways and ways of getting out of Britain without magic. Do open your mind Archie." Dorea replied; "The Moat stops all transport by magic in and out of Britain. That doesn't mean that a fishing boat won't do the job just as effectively, if slower, than a portkey."

* * *

**Boxing Day December 1944, 15,000 feet above the Dutch-German border.**

"Wolfhound leader, drop your babies." Charlus radioed, smacking the release for his drop tanks; "Twenty miles, time on target is four minutes. Echelon starboard."

The squadron, only ten operational aircraft rolled out into echelon starboard, with him leading the stack. The Tempests were roaring along at a good four-hundred miles an hour, higher and faster than the majority of the Luftwaffe or the Flak cannons could reach them. If they were to be intercepted, the Germans would have to sacrifice speed for clime rate, or clime rate for speed, and they were a small target for the most powerful Flak.

"_Wolfhound, this is Kenway, news isn't good. Strike ordered to continue without flak suppression._"

Some days weren't worth getting up for. Rheine-Hopsten was defended by multiple Flak battalions, with up to five-hundred muzzles already searching for the ten Tempests.

"Wolfhounds, target one o'clock. Attack... Break! Break! Break!" Charlus barked into his R/T.

The Tempests veered in every direction to split the fire as black puffs of smoke began. Rolling inverted, Charlus threw the hefty frame of the fighter into a steep dive, almost vertical. One of the black puffs had his aircraft rattling with shrapnel, but Hawker's tank-like fighter shrugged off the damage and kept diving, intact. As his altimeter wound down through two-thousand feet, he spotted a flak post spitting flames and lead at the scattered fighters. In a moment he released his two five-hundred pound bombs, just in time to see one of the Tempests swatted out of the sky by a direct hit from a shell.

"_Christ! Green Six blew up!_"

Poor kid. Not even on the squadron a week.

Hauling back on the stick, a couple of parked fighters came into his gunsight, ungainly on their long legs, sat on the concrete. He walked the flashes up their fuselages, hauling the Tempest around in a tight turn, his cannon spewing shells. A second Tempest raced past him, in a moment he saw the pilot slumped over the controls before it ploughed into the hard-standing and blew up.

A Tempest raced down the runway, firing into an aircraft taking off, and then suddenly there was a fast-moving Focke-Wulf abeam it.

"_This bastard isn't flying today if I have-_"

A burst of cannon fire, a collision and three aircraft were tumbling across the runway in flames. Shells slashed through the air, Charlus mindful to not allow his aircraft to climb much above twenty feet. For a moment he was staring down the barrels of a flakvierling mounted on a truck. A brief burst and the blast catapulted him skyward. Hanging out of his straps, he saw another Tempest climbing, climbing... falling.

To hell with it! Screams on the radio. A wing with an RAF roundel on the edge of an inferno in a field next to the airfield. The aircraft shaking with more near-misses. Throwing the aircraft around, he fired a last burst in the direction of the hangars and fled. Throttle wide open, skimming the hedgerows, Charlus fled. The guns had cut down half the squadron.

"Wolfhound leader, radio check."

"_Green three._"

"_Green eight._"

Silence.

Seven aircraft and seven pilots not responding. Heavens.

"Wolfhound section, formate over Rheine." Charlus sighed.

They were pulling back together to return to Volkel when suddenly Eight went down in flames. Breaking into a hard climb followed by a half-roll, Charlus spotted the long-nose Focke-Wulf diving back towards the trees. Slamming open the throttle through the emergency power wire, he dived after it. Gaining bit by bit with the engine roaring away, he closed to five-hundred yards and fired.

The Tempest shook, flicking over onto its back with every blast. Cannon shells tore through the Hawker's frame. A sharp pain ripped into his side and one of his own cannon jammed. Rolling out with a glance in the mirror before it too was blasted away by a shell revealed a second lock-nose '190 sat on his tail. Pushing the nose down a few degrees and entreating every bit of power from the Sabre, he fired a burst from the three remaining cannon, Charlus watched as pieces flew off the lead '190, then it flicked over, one wing departing from the fuselage, the aircraft tumbling into the woods.

Then Wolfhound Three was behind the second '190, which decided discretion was the better part of valour. Chopping the power, the German pilot flung his aircraft on a wing-tip, fired a highly-accurate burst into Green Three before racing away.

"Don't pursue." Charlus grunted over the radio; "Return to base."

* * *

**December 1944, Advanced Landing Ground B-80 Volkel, Holland.**

Leaving the NAAFI truck outside the on-base canteen, Dorea Black once more thanked whatever deity that before the war, before Grindelwald, Charlus had taught her to drive during one of her summer 'outings' from the House of Black. She adjusted her badly-fitting uniform and walked out to where she could see the aircraft parked outside the shattered remains of the hangars.

Each aircraft seemed to be in varying states of destruction, although not as badly as the bomb-blasted wreckage that had once formed the huge buildings in which aircraft would once have been serviced and stored. The air was cold, the snow thick on the ground. The roar of engines regular, as each working fighter was run up every half-an-hour to stop the oil freezing. A couple of aircraft were simply stripped of their parts, dragged to a corner of the airfield and burnt out.

All this hive of activity was going on before her eyes.

"_CRASH TEAMS CONDITION RED! I REPEAT CRASH TEAMS TO READINESS!_" bellowed a tannoy.

Dorea felt her disillusioned brother flinch at the noise. Their eyes were dragged briefly to the ringing of bells as a couple of fire engines raced by, mounted by alien forms in white asbestos suits. Then there was a flicker on the horizon, two smoking aircraft approaching the runway. One of them lowered its undercarriage, coming in to land.

Then everything went wrong. The following aircraft's engine cut out, a sudden silence, interrupted by a huge explosion. The landing aircraft's undercarriage leg on one side collapsed. The aircraft slewed around, then flipped, cartwheeling across the airfield in a horrific fireball. Suddenly Dorea's fist was in her mouth. The heat from the blast could be felt a hundred yards away.

With some skilful handling, the second aircraft managed a dead landing, with no engine, and no hydraulics to power the undercarriage and flaps. For a moment, teetering on its nose, it looked like the aircraft would flip onto its back, but then it fell back to earth and the crash men were around it, the other fire engine racing towards the burning wreck of the first Tempest.

"Don't know why they're bothering. Not like there's anything to rescue." snorted an RAF engineer who was approaching the NAAFI truck, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

Dorea didn't even look at him, trying to keep her stomach from rebelling.

"Whose are they?" asked a voice she distantly recognised as her brother, having dropped his disillusionment charm and opted for a transfigured copycat uniform that they'd seen a middle-ranking army officer wearing in London.

"Looks like Old Man Charlie Potter's lot. At least one of them now. Went an hour or two ago with eight aircraft. Looks like the flak did 'em good." the engineer replied gruffly; "Don't know how Old Charlie's still alive, his squadron's going through about a dozen pilots killed every month, not to comment on wounded and LMF'd."

When eventually a jeep reached the NAAFI canteen, it disgorged a figure that neither Dorea or Arcturus really recognised. With a pronounced limp and one hand pressing a bloody bandage to his side, Charlus made a beeline for a hot, heavily alcohol-spiked cup of tea, running his other hand through his pure grey hair. A weak smile, a grimace in truth, appeared as he spotted the Black, just pronouncing the pallid grey colour of his sunken face, the black bags under his eyes and the crow's feet.

"Archie. Dee. I'd give you each a hug but one of you would find that undignified and for the other... well I'm not exactly up to it right now." Charlus's voice was far gruffer, almost a rasp compared to what they both remembered.

"What happened?" Dorea asked hesitantly; "Five years shouldn't change you so."

"Once you've dodged death one too many times, you stop giving a damn and just get on with the job. Norway, Glorious, Britain, Malta, Burma. Knocks seven bells out of a man." Charlus shrugged, before grimacing with pain. "Come on, I'll probably be off my head with morphine by tomorrow morning, so we'll speak now."

* * *

_I had an idea about fleshing this out, I may one day, but I wanted to touch on this idea I had._


End file.
